From The Alpha and the Omega - Chapter Four
by Jim A. Cornwell, Copyright © 1995, all rights reserved
"Abraham, Nergal, and Babylon "
As seen in 2 Kings 17:30 And the men of Babylon made (worshipped) Succothbenoth (Succoth-benoth; Heb. sukkoth benoth, a pagan god whose image was worshipped in Samaria after Assyria had captured it; it may be a title of Marduk, the guardian deity of Babylon), and the men of Cuth (Cuthah, Cutha an area of Samaria and a city which Sargon in 720 B.C. repopulated as Cutheans. They began a syncretistic form of religion, worshipping both the true God and the gods of the nations.
From the contract tablets found by Rassam at Tel-Ibrahim it appears that the ancient name of Cuthah was Gudua or Kuta.
It’s ruins were 3,000 feet in circumference and 280 feet high. In it was a sanctuary dedicated to Ibrahim (Abraham). Both the city and its great temple, the later dedicated to Nergal, appear to date back to Sumerian times) made Nergal (Heb. nereghal, a Babylonian deity of destruction and disaster, associated with the planet Mars; A cylinder seal from Larsa, an ancient Sumerian city, c. 2360-2180 B.C., shows the god Nergal standing with one foot upon the body of an enemy). Gudea was king of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash (2144-2124 B.C.E.).
In Chapter Three on the subjects of giants I referenced, Imdugud a rain god worshipped in the area of the Ur of the Chaldees (west bank of the Euphrates). He was shaped like an eagle with a lion’s head, with wings like the clouds.
Sargon (2350 B.C.) claimed conquest of Elam in his day. Later on, about 2280, an Elamite king invaded Babylonia and took back much spoil.
Gudea, a ruler of the city of Lagash, about 2100 mentions that the Elamites collected some of the timbers he used in constructing the temple of Ningirsu (Ningursu), the god of Lagash. Gudea was a man who claimed that the god appeared to him in a dream and told him to build a temple at Lagash. Gudea did so. Ningursu (with a reference to Ninurta) who was a god of irrigation and fecundity, born of a she-goat, and god of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. He was as tall as the sky with a god’s head and beard, holding an eagle and a club with a net full of human captives, and hurricanes for feet. He was flanked by a pair of lions. He appeared to Gudea to build him a temple at Lagash.
See the following link from a page by Gary D. Thompson Illustration Gallery - Astronomical Artifacts and Cuneiform Tablets, etc. D: Early Mesopotamian Constellations 4: Sumerian constellations and star names? regarding the subject of Lagash, Gudea and Ningirsu.
Earlier Michael Rice on page 87 of his book Egypt in the Making discussed carved ivories from the temple at Hierakonpolis were not Egyptian craft but more as the art of Elam and Sumer at the end of the fourth millennium, "These ivory carvings provide what is perhaps the most remarkable evidence in the minor arts of the transfer of a technique familiar in Elam to an Egyptian context. One of the ivories was only recently cleaned and published, displays an identical treatment of the plumage of several of the birds, which are its most notable motif, with that of the plumage of an ‘Imdugud’ bird – a lion-headed eagle – represented in a piece of chlorite (or steatite) carving from a site on a tiny island of Tarut in eastern Saudi Arabia (Zarius, 1978), one of the most important centers of the Dilmun culture, later in the millennium focused on Bahrain. Most likely these items were made by an easterner or by an Egyptian craftsman trained or exposed to those who knew Elamite techniques."
All this previous information is the best that I can accumulate
about Abram in context with this book.
Although this synopsis did not cover every subject,
I believe as an overview it gets the point across to the possibility of its content.
This file was updated on 10/23/2014.
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