Gad Akkad Jordan Amman Umman Uman - Cuneiform uman x (UR5) is Amman, Jordan, Umman-manda in Akkadian - LexiLine Journal 519

In researching the ancient border stones in the Holy Land, I came upon the following interesting information about Gad, Akkad, Jordan, Amman and a host of other topics, including an ancient border treaty that was celebrated by the building of a megalithic site, about which we have posted previously. See the end of this posting if you are curious.

I suggest that in the ancient cuneiform texts the term uman x (UR5) is Amman, Jordan, which is Umman-manda in Akkadian, "an undetermined people" according to the Glossary of Proper Names in Mesopotamia in Douglas B. Miller and R. Mark Shipp, An Akkadian Handbook, 1996, p. 69, published by Eisenbrauns, POB 275, Winona Lake, IN, 46590, ISBN 0-931464-86-2.

The composite text of OB Nippur Ur5-ra 3 has the following entries:

334. KA-umanx(UR5)
335. umanx(UR5)
336. umanx(UR5) a
337. umanx(UR5) sag-du
338. umanx(UR5) a-šag4-ga
339. umanx(UR5) še
340. umanx(UR5) nisig
341. umanx(UR5) zi3-da
342. umanx(UR5) giš-ur3-ra
343. umanx(UR5) ŠUL

The x and the 5 are transcriptional subscripts, whereby the subscript 5 to UR means that this is a particular cuneiform sign so labelled as UR5, and which the scholars do not yet know how to differentiate from a simple UR sign. We have discovered that UR5 has a syllabic value which renders it Hebrew ARAWA, and it applied to everything EAST of the Jordan River - this was the land of GAD (i.e. AKKAD in the much more ancient period) and that is what in ancient Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform script is written as wr.URI, UR5.RA which applied to Akkad at the time of Sargon ca. 2400 BC.

As written at the Wikipedia under Ammon :

"The ancient kingdom of Ammon was located in northwestern Arabia east of Gilead and the Dead Sea. The borders of the Ammonite territory are not uniformly defined in the Old Testament. In Judges 11:13, the claim of the king of Ammon, who demands of the Israelites the restoration of the land "from Arnon even unto Jabbok and unto Jordan" is mentioned only as an unjust claim, since the Israelite part of this tract had been conquered from the Amorite king Sihon, who had, in turn, displaced the Moabites; in Judges 11:22 it is stated that the Israelites had possession "from the wilderness even unto Jordan", and that they laid claim to territory beyond this, so as to leave no room for Ammon. The Book of Numbers 21:24 describes the Hebrew conquest as having reached "even unto the children of Ammon, for the border of the children of Ammon was Jazer." Joshua 13:25, defines the frontier of the tribe of Gad as being "Jazer ... and half the land of the children of Ammon." The latter statement can be reconciled with Num. 21:24 and Deuteronomy 2:19, 37 by assuming that the northern part of Sihon's Amorite kingdom had formerly been Ammonite. This explains, in part, the claim mentioned above (Judges, 11:13). According to Deuteronomy 2:37, the region along the river Jabbok and the cities of the hill country formed the border of Israel. On the authority of Deuteronomy 2:20, their territory had formerly been in the possession of a mysterious nation, the Zamzummim (also called Zuzim), and the war of Chedorlaomer (Gen. 14:5) with this nation may be connected with the history of Ammon. When the Israelites invaded Canaan, they passed by the frontier of the Ammonites.

From their original territory, the Ammonites are supposed to have been expelled by Sihon, king of the Amorites. Sihon was said to have been found by the Israelites, after their deliverance from Egypt, in possession of Gilead, that is, the whole country on the left bank of the Jordan, to the north of the Arnon. By this invasion, the Ammonites were driven out of Gilead across the upper waters of the Jabbok, where it flows from south to north, which continued to be their western boundary. The other limits of the Ammonites, or country of the Ammonites were not exactly defined. On the south, it probably adjoined the land of Moab; on the north, it may have met that of the king of Geshur; and on the east it may have melted away into the desert peopled by Kedarites and other nomadic tribes."

In the Bible, as can be read in Samuel, in the account of the battle involving King Saul [I claim this was Akhenaten] , Jonathon [I claim this was Tutankhamun] and the Philistines, some of the Hebrews had gone over the Jordan River "to the land of Gad and Gilead".

As written by Douglas B. Miller and R. Mark Shipp in An Akkadian Handbook, Part Three, Glossary of Proper Names in Mesopotamia, (p. 43):

"Akkad (geo) in the Ur III period, the name of the northern region, as opposed to the southern, called Sumer; in later texts anachronistically indicates Babylonia as a whole -- wr.URI, UR5.RA.":

SHIMAAAAL which in my opinion is equivalent to Sumer means "North" in ancient Arabic (comparable to Indo-European, e.g. Latvian ZIEMEĻI "North", rather than South, which is the Arabic term YMN, i.e. by extrapolation Yemen (Jemen). This naming of North and South pretty clearly puts the origin of the Arabs historically in the area of Saudi Arabia and that is in fact where they were located then, based on ancient maps. Saudi Arabia was called Arabia. At this time JORDAN-LAND or ARAWA was not ruled by the Arabs, but rather by Sargon, who according to the legend of Sargon, ruled "the black-headed" natives of this region: "The black-headed [people] I ruled, I gov[erned]...." Scholars have misinterpreted that text to mean that the ruling class of Sumer was also black-headed, but that is not what the text says. If Sargon's administration had also been black-headed, there would be no reason to specify the hair color of his subjects.

We get a better idea to the solution of the riddle from the Jerusalem Illustrated Dictionary and Concordance of the Bible, where it states that Akkad was listed as a city under the dominion of the fabled king Nimrod (1st book of Moses, 10,10), located in Shinar (a term for all of Mesopotamia). This is in our opinion the same as Sihon viz. Sehon in Deuteronomy, where the Kingdom of Sehon has been equated/confused with the name of the King Sihon, headquartered at Heshbon, just south of Amman. These are also the Biblical Sinites (Hebrew Sıynıy) from regions to the east of the Holy Land. The term is sometimes written Thinai suggesting an original TSINAI which equates to Indo-European e.g. Latvian CINAJ- "moundy ground".

The Wikipedia describes Shinar as follows:

"Shinar (Hebrew שִׁנְעָר Šin`ar, Septuagint Σεννααρ Sennaar) is a broad designation applied to Mesopotamia, occurring eight times in the Hebrew Bible....

In the Book of Genesis 10:10, the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom is said to have been "Babel, and Uruk, and Akkad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." The following chapter, 11:2, states that Shinar was a plain settled after the flood, where mankind, still speaking one language, built the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 14:1,9 Shinar is the land ruled by king Amraphel, who reigned in Babylon. "Shinar" is further mentioned in Joshua 7:21; Isaiah 11:11; Daniel 1:2; and Zechariah 5:11, as a general synonym for Babylonia.

If Shinar included both Babylon ("Babel") and Erech, then "Shinar" broadly denoted southern Babylonia. Any cognate relation with Šumer, an Akkadian name used for a non-Semitic people who called themselves Kiengir, is not simple to explain and has been the subject of varied speculation. The Egyptian term for Babylonia / Mesopotamia was Sngr (Sangara), identified with the Sanhar of the Amarna letters by Sayce

Some scholars have suggested that Shinar must have been confined to the northern part of Mesopotamia (plain of Sinjar, immediately south of Mount Judi and west of Mount Nisir), based on Jubilees 9:3 which allots "Shinar" (or in the Ethiopic text, "Sadna Sena`or") to Asshur. However, 10:20 states that the Tower was built with bitumen from the sea of Shinar. Other scholars such as David Rohl, however, have proposed that the Tower was actually located in Eridu, once located on the Persian Gulf, where there are ruins of a massive, ancient ziggurat worked from bitumen.

This is where the sons of Shem, Ham and Japheth went after they tarried in the highlands of Armenia, after the flood (Vuibert, Ancient History)."

That latter sentence has application to our forthcoming posting about Gobekli Tepe, for that was the region from which the sons of Shem, Ham and Japheth came.

Akkad surely included the region north of Babylon near Sippar.

The Wikipedia writes about Sippar (a):

"Sippara (Zimbir in Sumerian, Sippar in Assyro-Babylonian) was an ancient Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates, north of Babylon. It was divided into two quarters, "Sippar of the Sun-god" and "Sippar of the goddess Anunit," the former of which was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1881 at Abu-Habba, 16 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Two other Sippars are mentioned in the inscriptions, one of them being "Sippar of Eden," which must have been an additional quarter of the city. It is possible that one of them should be identified with Agade or Akkad, the capital of the first Semitic Babylonian Empire.

The two Sippars of the Sun-god and Anunit are referred to in the Old Testament as Sepharvaim. A large number of cuneiform tablets and other monuments has been found in the ruins of the temple of the Sun-god which was called E-Babara by the Sumerians, Bit-Un by the Semites. The Chaldaean Noah is said by Berossus to have buried the records of the antediluvian world here--doubtless because the name of Sippar was supposed to be connected with sipru, "a writing"--and according to Abydenus (Fr. 9) Nebuchadrezzar excavated a great reservoir in the neighbourhood. Here too was the Babylonian camp in the reign of Nabonidos, and Pliny (N.H. vi. 30) states that it was the seat of a university."

As a matter of Biblical history, and I am certian that most of the Old Testament is true history, if we leave out some of the more religious parts, Akkad will be the region assigned to GAD, the seventh son of the Biblical Jacob. GAD's mother was SILPA (= SIPPAR). Today, the area assigned to the Hebrew Tribe of GAD is seen only as GILEAD , the immediate region East of the Jordan River, known in Aramaic as but that limits the area of Gad by too much, and the Bible tells us that Abraham's progeny ruled from the Euphrates to the Nile, a land which was, according to the Bible, given to the Hebrews through a covenant with God.

The reign of Sargon of Akkad and his Semitic peoples was in our view thus the reign of Gad and his progeny, which however lasted only several hundred years.

The Bible tells us that GAD and his tribe were later conquered by Ammonites (i.e. from Amman) viz. Amorites . These are perhaps the people in the OB written by the scholars as "Umman-manda", "Umman-madda" or "Umman-badda", a thus far"undetermined people", so write Miller and Shipp (p. 69). These Ammonites are later supplanted by the "Assyrians" who then ultimately drive the Tribe of Gad from the region East of the Jordan.

Jim Stinehart writes : " “Shinar” is strongly redolent of “Sanhar” and “Sangar” and “Singara”, all which historically meant “Syria” in the Late Bronze Age."

In Aram and Israel: The Aramaeans in Syria and Mesopotamia by Emil G. H. Kraeling , Columbia University Press, NY, 1918. Columbia University Oriental Studies Vol. 13; 171 pages (the link is to a modern reprint), Kraeling writes :

"We must assume therefore that Abram migrated from Harran to Palestine....

The next migration of importance is that of Jacob-Israel. Jacob's earliest seat was in Gilead, at Mizpeh. The pressure of other Aramaean tribes from the north caused him great difficulty. In the thirty-first chapter of Genesis, a document of great historical value, as we have had occasion to point out, we are told of a treaty between Jacob and Laban.... The coloring of the story is accurate, for we learn that a dolmen or cairn is erected, which Laban calls Yegar Sahdutha and Jacob, Ga'led. Dolmens, the megalithic monuments of the Indo-Europeans, are frequent in this region. What is more likely than that such a distinctive landmark of mysterious antiquity should serve as a boundary? Nor is there the least ground for supposing that the Aramaic name given the cairn by Laban is a late invention. For we have an analogy in an Aramaean Yaghra ("Hill") near the lake of Antioch.... Another version relates that they erected a pillar (Maggebah) and called it Mizpeh. The historian's purpose is no doubt to inform us that the town of Mizpeh in Gilead, which may have been near the famous dolmen, is the site where the treaty was concluded."

I have written before about the Jordan Tall Al-Umayri Megaliths Deciphered as Astronomy, but note the kind of date we are really talking about here in terms of chronology, i.e. ca. 3000 B.C. when these border stones - according to my astronomical analysis - were fixed. After all, Laban appears in Genesis in the Old Testament, so that this ancient treaty will be very old indeed.

Babylonian Calendar Reform 8th c. BC - LexiLine Journal 518

The Encylopedia of World History writes:

"Under Nabonasser (Nabu-nasir, 747-734) an important calendar reform was instituted [in Babylon] in which the monthly lunar cycle was reconciled with the solar year, a standard system still used in the Jewish calendar.

Note also my previous posting on Pharaonic calendar reform.

Alan Woods Unicode Resources - LexiLine Journal 517

Steve Burdic writes:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/ is a web site devoted to exploring the Unicode
Resources which is a convention used to display the alphabets of most of the
languages of the world. It even include the characters of the Phaisto Disk!

So far I have looked at the test pages for Unicode Ranges which is a summary of
each alphabet and Unicode's rendition of what those alphabet characters are
named. I have no idea how accurate or historical these names are. I assume that
if you have the Unicode software you could compose a document in the original
language's script. I really liked looking at the cuniform.

SENSATIONAL! Turin Canon of Kings - the Turin Papyrus - to be Revised - - LexiLine Journal 516

Turin Canon of Kings to be Revised : More Fragments Discovered

THIS IS SENSATIONAL NEWS!

Ancient Tides is a nice blog by Gregory LeFever with the motto "Linking ancient history to today". The blog covers current news on the topic of ancient cultures. One posting that caught our eye is More Fragments of Ancient List Are Found, which we plan to look into more carefully soon, as the Turin list of kings is an important document for the chronology of Ancient Egypt, upon which the chronology of the Ancient Near East is also principally based. We provide our decipherment of the Turin Canon (viz. Turin Papyrus, Turin Kinglist) here, here, here and here. See also COJS.org. As written at LexiLine:

"As some of you know, I have several times recommended the re-study of the Turin Canon by new thermoluminescence methods, since I am sure some of the pieces of this important historical papyrus have been mis-pasted in the reconstruction process. Thermoluminiscence would easily determine where the pieces should properly be pasted (by grains on the paper, etc.). My suggestions have fallen on deaf ears in Egyptology, for the same reason as given above - the object is "too important" to study - it might be damaged. And so, erroneous conclusions drawn from a - surely - falsely reconstructed document are used to map the chronology of ancient Egypt, for which the Turin Canon is of eminent importance."

LeFever links us to a Discovery article by Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News, Fragments of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Found, in which Lorenzi reports that additional fragments of the Turin Canon (they call it the Turin Kinglist), an ancient Papyrus listing the rulers of Ancient Egypt, have been found. As Lorenzi writes, the fragments were found:

"[S]tored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist.... Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions fragments that were not included in the final reconstruction on display at the museum. After an extensive search, museum researchers found the pieces....

The finding could help more accurately piece together what is considered to be a key item for understanding ancient Egyptian history.

This is one of the most important documents to reconstruct the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty," Federico Bottigliengo, Egyptologist at the Turin museum, told Discovery News.

Unlike other lists of kings, it enumerates all rulers, including the minor ones and those considered usurpers. Moreover, it records the length of reigns in years, and in some cases even in months and days....

Some of the finest scholars have worked on the papyrus last century, but disagreement about its reconstruction has remained," Bottigliengo said. "It has been a never-ending puzzle....

We are confident that a new examination with modern scientific techniques will enable a much improved reconstruction to be achieved," Richard Parkinson, curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, told Discovery News."

This is a great day for the study of Ancient Egypt, because it means that the reconstruction of the Turin Papyrus will finally be corrected by the necessity to fit in the new pieces - which of course will demand that the old reconstruction also be reviewed. I am certain that my decipherment will be shown to be accurate.

See the full Discovery News posting.

A longer and more detailed account is found at New fragments of the Turin King List : Fresh light on the pharaohs , by Robyn Gillam

See also Vittorio Sabadin "I faraoni scomparsi nel buco:Trovati nei sotterranei dell'Egizio di Torino i frammenti mancanti del "Papiro Reale": sovrani sconosciuti e una storia da riscrivere " (see Google Translation into English) La Stampa, 19th February, 2009

Others posting on this development are Roger Pearse , Muhlberger's Early History, NewKerala.com , News from the Valley of the Kings , Tim - The Egyptians
__________

Update February 22, 2010. Nothing more has been heard about progress on the re-reconstruction of the Turin Papyrus so that we reproduce the original Discovery News story by Rossella Lorenzi from February 27, 2009 below so that it is not lost in the digital shuffle - as so much has been, but as long as it is still online, make sure you see the original with graphic:

Fragments of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Found
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, Feb. 27, 2009

Some newly recovered papyrus fragments may finally help solve a century-old puzzle, shedding new light on ancient Egyptian history.
Found stored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist....
Like many ancient Egyptian documents, the Turin Kinglist is written on the stem of a papyrus plant.
Believed to date from the long reign of Ramesses II, the papyrus contains an ancient list of Egyptian kings.
Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions fragments that were not included in the final reconstruction on display at the museum. After an extensive search, museum researchers found the pieces.
The finding could help more accurately piece together what is considered to be a key item for understanding ancient Egyptian history.
"This is one of the most important documents to reconstruct the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty," Federico Bottigliengo, Egyptologist at the Turin museum, told Discovery News.
"Unlike other lists of kings, it enumerates all rulers, including the minor ones and those considered usurpers. Moreover, it records the length of reigns in years, and in some cases even in months and days."
Written in an ancient Egyptian cursive writing system called hieratic, the papyrus was purchased in Thebes by the Italian diplomat and explorer Bernardino Drovetti in 1822.
Placed in a box along with other papyri, the parchment disintegrated into small fragments by the time it arrived in Italy.
Some 48 pieces of the puzzle were first assembled by French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832).
Later, some other hundred fragments were pieced together by German and American archaeologist Gustavus Seyffarth (1796-1885).
One of the most important restorations was made in 1938 by Giulio Farina, the museum's director.
But in 1959, Gardiner, the British Egyptologist, proposed another placement of the fragments, including the newly recovered pieces.
Now made of 160 fragments, the Turin Kinglist basically lacks two important parts: the introduction of the list and the ending.
Some of the finest scholars have worked on the papyrus last century, but disagreement about its reconstruction has remained," Bottigliengo said. "It has been a never-ending puzzle."
"The enumeration of the kings does not continue after the 17th Dynasty. We are confident that the recovered fragments will help reconstruct some of the missing parts as well as add new knowledge to Egyptian history and chronology."
"It is possible that some dates will have to be changed and names of pharaohs will have to be added," Bottigliengo said.
The newly recovered fragments have been examined by the experts of the British Museum, following a collaboration begun by the museum director Eleni Vassilika. She drew on the experience of Gardiner, in conserving and mounting papyri.
"A preliminary visit revealed that there is huge potential to conserve and reconstruct the papyrus, including many small fragments that were left unplaced in Farina's arrangement of the 1930s."
"We are confident that a new examination with modern scientific techniques will enable a much improved reconstruction to be achieved," Richard Parkinson, curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, told Discovery News.

Gobekli Tepe Deciphered as Astronomy - Initial Analysis - LexiLine Journal 515

Take a look at what James Q. Jacobs has written about Ur, Harran and Gobekli Tepe at
http://jqjacobs.net/blog/gobekli_tepe.html.

I am not the first to see astronomy in these megaliths, but I see some interesting things there that no one else has caught that will help to date the complex accurately.

Jacobs mentions the legendary connection of the Biblical Abraham to Harran, which is near Gobekli Tepe. I think that this is in fact the area of the origin of Abraham.

Here is what I wrote at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1664:

"At Lexiline http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi154.htm, where I present the ages of the Biblical partriarchs as reigns which were calculated and recorded by astronomy, what I call star realms.

William Walker III calculated that the star data applies only at a location around 42.5°N, i.e. supporting the idea that the Biblical Patriarchs came from the Black Sea Flood submergence. Our cardinal date for that calculation was 3117 BC, using a location at 42.5°N.

We have since recalculated the starting location of the Biblical Patriarch stellar data with the Starry Night Pro software and have discovered that the start of the data at the rising and setting of the star Arcturus, given the starting date of the Hebrew Calendar at 3761 B.C., would be in a geographic area at about 37° to 38° N, and we now think that to be the more accurate location for the astronomical start of the reigns of the Biblical Patriarchs as calculated by astronomy."

The coordinates for Gobekli Tepe are 37°13´22.81´´N 38°55´20.51 E.

I definitely think that this is where the Hebrew calendar may have started and that Gobekli Tepe represents the location where the astronomical calculations necessary to start such a calendar were probably made.

Read in full my posting at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1664 and Star Realms of the Patriarchs, Ur and Ebla - LexiLine Journal 482 where I write as follows:

At Lexiline http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi154.htm, I present the ages of the Biblical partriarchs as reigns which were calculated and recorded by astronomy, what I call star realms.

William Walker III calculated that the star data applies only at a location around 42.5°N, i.e. supporting the idea that the Biblical Patriarchs came from the Black Sea Flood submergence. Our cardinal date for that calculation was 3117 BC, using a location at 42.5°N.

We have since recalculated the starting location of the Biblical Patriarch stellar data with the Starry Night Pro software and have discovered that the start of the data at the rising and setting of the star Arcturus, given the starting date of the Hebrew Calendar at 3761 B.C., would be in a geographic area at about 37° to 38° N, and we now think that to be the more accurate location for the astronomical start of the reigns of the Biblical Patriarchs as calculated by astronomy.

Our previous position was that the Biblical data related to a starting date of ca. 3117 B.C. In that era at ca. 3117 BC, according to Starry Night Pro, at the latitude 42°30" N, as one can see in the graphic below, Arcturus, at which the reigns of the Biblical Patriarchs begin with Adam, is more or less right at the horizon and ready in a few years to lose its circumpolar status at that latitude.


42°30" N 3117 BC


Already one degree below that at 41°30" N in 3117 B.C., Arcturus is no longer a circumpolar star in that epoch and is definitely subject to description as a rising and setting star, as in our star realms of the Biblical Patriarchs.

In terms of chronological time, Arcturus also reaches this same position at 42°30" N in ca. 2950 BC.

We thought and still think Arcturus was used as the first star of this Biblical Patriarch series because at this time in history - at the right latitude (which still remains to be fixed) - Arcturus goes from being a circumpolar star to being a star that also dips below the horizon due to the 25920 year cycle of the wobble of the earth, which leads to precession and a change in the position of the celestial equator, which then of course changes the position of Arcturus in the sky. In this epoch, Arcturus was slowly dropping.


41°30" N 3117 BC
Arcturus at the horizon is also what one would see ca. 38°N to 37°N in 3761 B.C.

Accordingly, what we wrote previously at LexiLine at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi154.htm was in the general ball park of accuracy as far as the rising and setting of Arcturus is concerned for 3117 B.C., using the reference point of 42°30" N, which William Walker calculated.

However, if our theory of the "star ages" or "star realms" of the Biblical Patriarchs is true, which we think it is, it only holds true if their reigns were recorded for posterity for a starting date of ca. 3117 BC, but using the positions of the stars at 42°30" N. But this is highly unlikely, since in 3117 BC the Black Sea was already submerged.

Accordingly, a change in the point of reference in terms of time and location is necessary.

We ourselves have never been happy with the 42°30" N latitude theory (but saw no choice but to adopt it due to the data given to us) and have always thought that the star eras of the Biblical Patriarchs must apply to a more southerly location, where the data was actually calculated and recorded by the Hebrew scholars in a later epoch.

Accordingly, instead of the 3117 B.C. cardinal date, we recently took the starting date of the Hebrew Calendar for our astronomical calculations.

We now assume that these star realms of the Biblical Patriarchs were in fact recorded taking a starting date as 3761 BC, which is the start of the Hebrew calendar.

At what latitude in that epoch would Arcturus then start its non-circumpolar status? i.e. at what latitude does Arcturus start to dip minimally below the horizon during the daily rotation of the stars in 3761 B.C.?

In the year 3761 B.C., according to Starry Night Pro, Arcturus begins its non-circumpolar status somewhere around latitude 38° N to 37°N. Above that latitude in that epoch it still remains circumpolar and would not and could not be used as a rising or setting star to calculate the star realms of the Biblical Pharaohs.

This brings us new observations. A location of 38° N to 37°N as the location for calculating the data with a starting reference date of 3761 B.C. is very interesting indeed.

According to the legends of the MIddle East, the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, is not the Babylonian Ur, but the city of Urfa (ca. 37° N.), ancient Anatolia, in today's southeastern Turkey, just above the Syrian border.

The Wikipedia writes:

"The city has been known by many names: Ուռհա, Urhai in Armenian, ܐܘܪܗܝ, Urhay in Syriac, Riha in Kurdish, الروها,Ar-Ruha in Arabic, Ορρα, Orrha in Greek (also Ορροα, Orrhoa). For awhile it was named Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe (Greek: α`ντιόχεια η επί Καλλιρρόης). During Byzantine rule it was named Justinopolis. Although it is often best known by the name given it by the Seleucids, Εδεσσα, Edessa.

'Sanli' means great, glorious, dignified in Turkish and Urfa was officially re-named Sanliurfa (Urfa the Glorious) by the Turkish GrandNational Assembly in 1984....

Urfa is a city in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Sanliurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters. The urban population of Urfa is mainly Kurdish while the outlying regions are mixed Turkish and to a lesser degree Arabian.... It was one of several cities in the Euphrates-Tigris basin, the cradle of the Mesopotamian civilization. According to Turkish Muslim traditions Urfa (its name since Byzantine days) is the biblical city of Ur, due to its proximity to the biblical village of Harran. However, the Iraqis also claim the city of Ur in southern Iraq, as do many historians and archaeologists. Urfa is also known as the birthplace of Abraham, commemorated by a mosque in the city and the birthplace of Job."

Burak Sansal writes:

"This is an Anatolian city which has figured in all the religions of the book. Old Testament prophets such as Jethro (Hz. Suayp), Job (Hz. Eyup), Elijah (Hz. Elyasa) and Abraham (Hz. Ibrahim) lived in this city, which in ancient times was known as Edessa, and Moses (Hz. Musa) lived in the region for seven years working as a shepherd before returning to Egypt with his staff. It was in Sanliurfa that early Christians were first permitted to worship freely, and where the first churches were constructed openly. Pagan temples were converted to synagogues, synagogues to churches and churches to mosques, resulting in a uniquely eclectic architecture."

As can be read at the site of the Sanliurfa Museum, the region is marked by numerous tumuli, many now destroyed by dams:

"A testament to the rich past of the region of Sanliurfa is the large number of tumuli and old settlements. Harran, located 44 kilometers south of Sanliurfa, is one of the most notable of these settlements and was continuously inhabited from 3000 BC to the 13th century. It was especially noted for its peculiar civilian architecture.

Salvage excavations are being conducted in the settlements threatened by the dams of Ataturk, Birecik and Kargamis. Starting from 1978, foreign teams conducted excavations in the Lidar and Hassek tumuli which were to be submerged under Ataturk Dam Lake, while the museum directorate was involved in the excavation of Cavi Field and Nevala Cori. Salvage excavations have been taking place since 1996 in Tilbes Tumulus which will disappear under the waters of Birecik Dam; Apamea, a Hellenistic city threatened by the same dam, has been excavated since 1998....

In Sanliurfa museum, pieces obtained from Harran and other cultural assets recovered from other tumuli and ancient settlements are exhibited in different cases in alphabetical order. Pieces from the time of the Assyrians, Babylonians and the Hittites are exhibited in the entrance hall.

The second and third halls of the archaeology section have cutting and piercing devices made of flintstone (8000-5000 BC), stone idols and vessels, plain and painted ceramics with geometric designs made of baked soil belonging to the period 5000-3000 BC, seals, pithoi, necklaces, pieces of imprinted cubes made of baked soil dating back to the Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 BC), animal figures, metal artifacts, and ornaments."

A good distance southwest of Urfa and Harran and 55 km SW of Aleppo in Syria we find the ancient city of Ebla (Tell Mardikh. In view of the name of Ebla's most illustrious king, Ebrium or Ibrium (in my opinion this could be a reference to Abraham), Ebla most certainly was Ebra and the "land of the Hebrews" at that time. Ebla has become increasingly important in archaeological assessments of the Ancient Near East (text misspellings corrected in the following quotations):

"c. 3.0 tya BCE :
Semitic people called the Canaanites inhabit ancient Palestine and Phoenicia. "Phoenicia" is the Greek translation of "Canaan--the land of purple merchants" referring to the dye they used to color cloth. Indeed, it is from the time of Canaan that Bethlehem is believed to have derived its name, Bethlehem - 'BeitLahem' in Arabic ("The house of Lahman" - a Canaanite God). The term 'Semitic' is generally synonymous with 'Jewish' but is said to include the related group of people who spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Amharic. These languages are all classified by linguists as a group of tongues constituting the Afro-Asiatic Language Family.

More recent archaeological discoveries which tend to promote the importance of the civilization centered in the city of Ebla...(as opposed to Mesopotamia)... indicate that it may be useful to name some of the levantine discoveries as "Pre-Eblaic, Elbaic or Post-Eblaic", ... the cause of the decline of this culture is not yet well elucidated."

The Eblaites, because of their writings, might be considered the descendants of the Sumerians, who were the Indo-European people of the Black Sea Flood:

"In 1964, Italian archaeologists from the University of Rome La Sapienza directed by Paolo Matthiae began excavating at Tell Mardikh. In 1968 they recovered a statue dedicated to the goddess Ishtar bearing the name of Ibbit-Lim, a king of Ebla [after whom Bethlehem was named?]. That identified the city, long known from Egyptian and Akkadian inscriptions. In the next decade the team discovered a palace dating approximately from 2500-2000 BC. About 15,000 well-preserved cuneiform tablets were discovered in the ruins. About 80% of the tablets are written in Sumerian, the others in a previously unknown Semitic language that is being called 'Eblaite.' Pettinato and Dahood believe the Eblaite language is West Semitic, however Gelb and others believe it is an East Semitic dialect, closer to Akkadian. Ebla's close link to southern Mesopotamia, where the script had developed, establishes further the links between the Sumerians and Semitic cultures that certainly already existed before the first texts appear in Sumer in 3000 BC. Vocabulary lists were found with the tablets, allowing them to be translated." [emphasis added]

Clifford Wilson writes about the many thousands of Ebla Tablets found at Ebla:

"When the first tablets were found, it was soon realized that this city used a very ancient language in the North West Semitic group which was previously unknown. Professor Pettinato labeled this "Paleo-Canaanite." In layman's terms, this means "ancient Canaanite." At the close of this article in Biblical Archaeologist Professor Pettinato tells us,

The pronominal and verbal systems, in particular, are so clearly defined that one can properly speak of a Paleo-Canaanite language closely akin to Hebrew and Phoenician.

These Ebla tablets are written in a Sumerian script, with Sumerian logograms adapted to represent Akkadian words and syllables. About 1,000 words were recovered initially (hundreds more later) in vocabulary lists. The words are written out in both Sumerian logograms and Eblaic syllable-type writing. These offered an invaluable key to the interpretation of many of the Ebla texts. The vocabularies at Ebla were distinctively Semitic: the word "to write" is k-t-b (as in Hebrew), while that for "king" is "malikum," and that for "man" is "adamu." The closeness to Hebrew is surprising.""

The Ebla tablets mention Ur (Urfa).

Yes, and there is a Pharaonic connection as well:

"Most of its trade seems to have been directed towards Mesopotamia (chiefly Kish), and contacts with Egypt are attested by gifts from pharaohs Khafra and Pepi I."

Now, why would the Pharaohs be giving gifts to Ebla unless there was a close blood relationship between them?

Gobekli Tepe Decipherment Forthcoming : Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden? : Tom Knox - LexiLine Journal 514

Scott sent this link about Gobekli Tepe:

This was interesting to me:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark\
-site-Garden-Eden.html
______________

Andis Kaulins replied:

Gobekli Tepe, referred to in the previous posting and already discussed or mentioned in November of last year here on LexiLine (here, here and here ), is an important archaeological site.

As I shall demonstrate in my next posting, there is no doubt that these megaliths are astronomical, though the dating assigned to them currently by the archaeologists is false.

I have provisionally deciphered some of the stones and will post something about that decipherment, perhaps later today. I have been reluctant to publish my work up to now, even though my results have been available for a while, because not really enough photos and no really useful groundplans of the Gobekli Tepe megalithic site are available online yet - and that is typical for the archaeologists - lots of hype, not enough hard-nosed facts.

However, it appears to be important to emphasize that the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe are astronomy and material from me is forthcoming forthwith.
______________

Steve Burdic replied:

There are several interesting u tube movies of Gobekli Tepe. Some show an overhead reconstruction viz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBfxUq6Z1KM
Several are even in German. A google earth view of the area is also enlightening.
______________

Andis Kaulins replied:

Yes, thank you for your reference. The problem is that there are no
resources online to determine where each of the stones with figures on
them are specifically located within the complex. All that we know thus
far is that there are numerous circles of stones and that some of them
have some spectacular images carved upon them, spectacular in any case,
if one believes the erroneous dating assigned to those megaliths
currently. In fact, archaeologists still treat each stone as a if it led
a monadic existence, rather than looking at the whole picture. This
total cluelessness has nevertheless not hindered some commentators from
publishing completely unbased speculations about the meaning of the
stones. You can forget all of them. These complexes are astronomical in
nature - and one of the stones is truly spectacular because it allows me
to date the entire complex to a specific ancient passage of Halley's
Comet. So much for clues.

In any case, I have been held up the past couple of days with a number
of other things that have come up so that I will not be posting my
Gobekli Tepe materials for a week or more. I am rechecking everything as
well to make sure the best possible analysis is presented, given the
extremely limited materials that I presently have to work with. Writing
my results up properly is also taking more time than expected.

See if you can find Halley's Comet on one of the megaliths. It is there.
______________

Steve Burdic replied:

At http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmSIG4qV2Sg some additional view of the stones. This one has reference to copies of the stones in a German museum: Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe.If they have copies there they might have other information like stone placements etc. When I first saw this clip I was concerned they had taken the stones out of place and hauled them to Germany thus disturbing their orientation. Not so.

Have you looked at Galactic Alignment 2012 by John Major Jenkins? It is about the Mayan end of time to be sure but I got a lot out of the book. His theory is that Mayan religion used the precession caused alignment of the winter solstice with the galactic center to base their entire reality (mythic) structure on. You can say what you want about the "end of the world" aspect but I took several things away from the book. One was that modern man migrated out of Africa only 70,000 years ago. Another was that in that same time frame, due to drought, modern humans numbered about 4,000 people. Another thing was that the plane of the galaxy and the plane of the ecliptic make an angle of 60 degrees. that is the same angle as the solstice at Cahokia. In the process of working out the geometry of that angle I have noticed the resulting diamond shaped figure of two connected equilateral triangles as a major design feature worldwide. Since the solstice angle is dependent on the latitude of observation, I could not understand why that diamond has such wide spread appeal. Naturally, there are many factors (surveying, architecture, mathematics, astronomy etc) but now I think that galactic/ecliptic angle may have made the latitude where the solstice angle occurs more important for religious centers (Gobelki Tepe is on that latitude).

This book is very speculative but he uses the work of many archeologists to support his work and uses evidence to support his speculation. It also helped me put meso-american history together better than any other book I have read.