The earliest era of Mesopotamian history is termed the “Ubaid period” when the seeding of urbanization and proto-settlements begins. There is a widespread dating for this era between 5000-3700 BCE, where the specialized production of pottery at sites like Tell al Ubaid and Eridu tend to characterize the archeological layers of the period.1 This period really exhibits the first widespread usage of agriculture and animal husbandry, which would line up fittingly with both Cain and Abel as farmer and shepherd.2
Some of the first ‘houses’ began to be constructed in this period, which were later developed into the earliest temples. As is clear from the image, these temples were not very large and wouldn’t have supported multi-story structures making them too early for the later ziggurats that appear to be similar to the Tower of Babel. The architecture in this period also tends to be mud-brick, rather than the later fired-brick, pointing to a period much earlier than Babel.
This temple at Eridu, while not a ziggurat, does serve as a critical link to the later ziggurat at Eridu constructed and renovated in successive periods. While the Eridu Temple was not a tower to the gods, it was another pagan structure that served as the model for the structures that would later follow on the same site. The temple is continually expanded over nearly 1500 years making it a cultural mainstay in the region, probably known to anyone nearby, or even fairly far away.
This temple really serves as the central hub of the city, and much of the Ubaid period, where it was called the “House of the Aquifer” or Bitu Apsu.3 The concept of the Abzu serves a central role in the Sumerian religion as a fresh water spring that brings forth life from within the earth, and thus plays a central role in the process of creation within the mythology. We can therefore see early signs of the Sumerian religion even if their records of the theology had yet to fully develop. What is interesting is the focus of the temple's worship was the god Enki, however it is actually the temple of his consort Ninhursag at Ubaid that shows the religious relationship between these two cities.4
This structure was destroyed and leveled by the Uruk period that follows up the Ubaid, but it is renovated by many successive kings of Sumeria, some of which, like Enmerkar or Ur-Nammu, we will explore over the coming sections. The reality is that despite the importance of the Ubaid period, it lacked the development of proper cities, and probably on some level lacked official kings and state bureaucracies. This absence of cities helps characterize it as a separate period from the one at Babel, but might better align with the pre-Flood era. There may have been tribal chieftains, or local rulers, that oversaw the management of the various complex roles and religious functions similar to a shaman; it's unclear what tier of organized management between these groups was taking place on a collective level. We find the existence of sailing in Kuwait5, which might correspond to the well known trade route down toward Dilmun, but we also know pottery from Ubaid is found all the way in the Indus valley and Dilmun.6 This suggests some level of organization, with some form of leaders, but no nations as we would understand them today.
With the absence of real cities, comes the absence of real warfare suggested by the lack of widespread burnt villages only found in outlying cases. There are some primitive weapons such as copper axes, and possibly arrowheads and sling bullets, but their usage is unclear and appears mostly for hunting purposes.7 However, it would be interesting if these weapons triggered some of the earlier disputes between brothers; while not outright war this could be the mechanism by which Cain murdered Abel.
The timeline makes sense given the earliest secular dating for Adam’s children's birth is sometime around ~3760 BCE which actually fully bookends the Ubaid period, when it shifts into the Uruk period. What is clear is the different levels of organization in the Ubaid and Uruk periods “A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions.”8
In the north there were even earlier cultures like the Hassuna, Halaf, and Samarra cultures which all pre-dated the more southern Ubaid culture. Each of them exhibited nearly all of the characteristics of the Ubaid period, but with more primitive techniques that were later developed and advanced in the Ubaid period. Much of the Ubaid culture feeds back into the north, even though many of those sites are actually abandoned in favor of Ubaid sites and lack continuous centralized settlement in the way the Ubaid culture develops into Sumerian.
We could therefore presume that despite the advancement of many civilizational technologies in North Mesopotamia that did trickle downstream into South Mesopotamia such as animal husbandry, or early farming practices; it was really the synthesis of these ideas as a cohesive whole in south which led to the rise of the earliest ‘civilizations’. This transitional period is typically seen as 4000-3800 BCE based on the development of the Eanna quarter of Uruk - around the Temple of Inanna mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh.9
The exact differentiation of the periods is fuzzy, but even the earliest periods of Uruk up to the later period seem markedly different from the ‘Late Uruk’ period. It is only in the Late Uruk era that we would see the arrival of what we typically understand as complex state bureaucracies, as well as the important monumental constructions we envision.10 There is even debate if the Late Uruk has a ‘Final Uruk’ period which is typically separated into its own period called Jemdet Nasr dated between 3100-2900 BCE.11 This is the difference between the Copper and Bronze ages.
We can pull a few interesting correlations to the Jewish timeline from these periods. First off, the earlier point of Adam’s children’s birth beginning around the foundation of the Uruk is the early start point. The second major event is actually the birth of Chanoch, otherwise known as Enoch (from the line of Seth). The traditional dating of his birth is 3139 BCE fitting right in line with the transition from Uruk to Jemdet Nasr. It is very clear there were some critical ideological events that occurred in that era marking a cultural shift in the entire populace.
There are even scholars who attempted to link Enoch to the Chinese hero Fuxi given his birth seems to also at earliest date to 2900 BCE, and sometime around 2600. Fuxi also begins teaching methods of divination (just like Enoch) that are to this day reportedly preserved within the I Ching - the most important text of Chinese Taoism.12 The identification doesn’t totally line up, and comes from the Jesuit Christian Figurists who often have very contrived theories, but it does seem plausible there is some memory of Enoch encoded into the stories of Fuxi. These same Figurists link Enoch, Fuxi and Hermes Trismegistus - a sort of legendary pseudo-prophet and author of the Hermetica, foundational text of Hermeticism - together as a singular figure.
What is interesting is that traditional Chinese timelines also inject an era of ‘creation’ based on the Legend of the Four Shi. One of these is Fuxi, but the other four are Shennong, Suiren, and Youchao.13 The latter of these, Youchao, supposedly ruled China roughly 200 years from 3162-2962 BCE, once again lining up with Jemdet Nasr. While Youchao is only the first ruler, said to be the inverter of houses and buildings, his successor Suiren - the inventor of fire - ruled the next 110 years until 2852 BCE.
The third major event is actually Adam’s death, occurring traditionally around 2831 BCE, again slotting right into the end of that Jemdet Nasr period, and the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period of Sumerian history. Some 125 years after the death of Adam comes the birth of Noah, placing this timeframe right in line with another important transition in not just archeology but also the Biblical chronology. With the loss of Adam came the loss of the purest forms of wisdom that humanity had access to, leading directly to Enoch’s ability to mislead, and the ultimate widespread sinful behavior that characterized the world around Noah.
The fourth major event occurs 500 years later with the birth of Noah’s three sons, and 100 years after that with the important Flood event covering the earth. This places us around 2205 for the birth of the sons, and 2105 for the Flood, while traditional scholarship ends the Early Dynasty Period around 2350 BCE. However, the short chronology pushes it to 2230 BCE adding 120 year's and lining perfectly with not Noah’s son's birth, but actually 20 years before that in 2225 BCE when he started construction of the ark! Perhaps the massive upheaval around Noah was the trigger by which the world began to be misled, and within those 5 years Noah is visited by a message from God to construct the ark for the coming calamity - which doesn’t even happen for another 120 years!
Interestingly, the previously mentioned Chinese legendary emperors feature in the central Chinese historical record called the “Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors” which itself concludes with a final Emperor Shun, ruling between 2294-2184 (another 110 years). Not only does the Hebrew canon line up with the archeological dating, but also the Chinese and Sumerian timelines perfectly correspond through their mutual “Kings/Emperors Lists”. Even more wild is not just the obvious Sumerian flood myths that we will extensively cover, but in Chinese mythology the very figure following Shun is the king named “Yu the Engineer”, titled so for his role in “the first successful state efforts at flood control”.14 Yu is an important figure and founder of the first Chinese Xia Dynasty15 sometime around the year 2070 BCE which crazily enough lines up with that Flood transition. Something happened around this era.
While the chronology is debatable, it was in this timeframe that both the rise and fall of the massively important Akkadian Empire occurred, which is really the world's first ‘Empire’ in the proper usage of the term. This was the earliest there was any sort of unification, and it was also a turning point in the periodization shifting to be characterized by individual dynasties, and states, rather than archeological cultures. The obvious name “Akkadian” hints at their culture and language based out of the city of Akkad attested to even in the Bible. Interestingly, unlike Sumerian which was based on earlier pictographic systems, Akkadian was actually Semitic, related to the Hebrew language, and a fairly strong candidate for the ‘original’ tongue of Noah, and his sons. The empire was disestablished by 2154 BCE, only 50 odd years before the Flood.
There is the existence of the mysterious Gutians who we know little about, but appear on the scene around 2141 BCE, but disestablish by 2050 BCE making their civilization characterized by the era of the Flood. It is unclear to what degree this Flood played a role in their ascension, or descension. Their era is finalized by the rise of the critical Ur III under ruler Ur-Nammu whose dating is debated but under short chronology between 2048-2030 BCE16, quite literally the years of Eber’s birth presumably in Ur of the Chaldees.
Ur-Nammu’s empire's rise is debated under different chronologies, but the middle chronology places it between 2112-2004 BCE literally 7 years prior to the events of the Flood which is extremely interesting, and would place him as the earliest ruler following the Flood, in other words a prime target for Nimrod. Due to the varying chronologies, it’s difficult to know which ruler was “first after the flood”. Let’s not get hung up on this point, or any single identification for Nimrod, since we must remember this theory of multiple Nimrod’s is the very lynchpin holding everything together, and regardless of Ur-Nammu being ‘a Nimrod’ the later Amraphel appears entirely different, which we will see in a section devoted to the Third Dynasty of Ur.
Another critical era was the Isin-Larsa period beginning sometime around 2025 BCE17, founded by Semitic rulers who assimilated into the Mesopotamian cultural milieu.18 There is obviously a lot of transition, and new foundational dynasties exactly after the Flood providing circumstantial evidence for at the very least a regional upheaval in state infrastructure. We will fully analyze all of these periods, empires, rulers, and figures shortly to see how they fit into the biblical chronology of events.
Briefly turning our attention to physical evidence for a location of a “Nimrod” before looking at archeological theories, there are dozens of ruins and sites named after, or associated with Nimrod all across the Middle East. However, the problem is that none of these archeological sites retain an endogamous name or association to Nimrod, and appear to have later stories affiliated with Nimrod rather than represent any genuine history making these sites useless for our efforts.19
A similar situation exists in Hungarian legends describing an Enchanted Stag - often referred to as the White Stag, or Silver Stag - where we learn of a King Ménrót who is often described as “Nimrod the Giant” who is the forefather of the Hungarians. After the failure of Babel and confusion of languages, Nimrod moves to a land called Evilát, where his wife, Enéh gives birth to twin brothers named Hunor and Magor. The former name is obviously a reference to the Huns, while the latter is a reference to the Magyars, the Hungarian ethnonym.
Their ancestry actually links into the Alans through Nimrod’s marriage to the two daughters of the Alanic King Dul who were actually kidnapped during his hunt for the White Stag.20 The veracity of this legend’s truth is divisive, but in our section on Japheth dealing with Magog, we actually associated them to the Alans, as well as the Magyars. While Magog did not come from Nimrod, it’s possible through one of his Alanic descendants he sired the Huns and Magyars through a marriage to Nimrod who outlived many of the grandsons of Noah.
Circumstantial evidence for this connection could be both groups' skill with the recurve bow and arrow which due to their great hunting ability matches the descriptions of Nimrod. If any group were to be called “Mighty Hunters”, the Huns do fit the description. The only problem is this theory feels contrived on circumstance rather than having ancient evidence linking these groups. Granted, they both appear much later in historical records so it’s very hard to know when a people group was birthed, but ultimately if Nimrod were to father these children after Babel, how did he become Amraphel? Unclear, and thus, unlikely.
Ultimately, there are no physical locations associated with a “Nimrod”, but the same cannot be said for Amraphel, or the obvious location of Babel. In order to not only figure out who this Amraphel might be identified with, but also line up the presence of potentially multiple Nimrods, we will need to look at the successive kingships present in ancient Sumeria (Shinar) for potential figures. This is the only way to clearly break down the competing associations for Nimrod to see which of them fit into this spiritual ‘recycling of souls’ (Gilgul HaNeshamot).
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Canton, James; Cleary, Helen; Kramer, Ann; Laxby, Robin; Loxley, Diana; Ripley, Esther; Todd, Megan; Shaghar, Hila; Valente, Alex; et al. (Authors) (2016). Canton, James (ed.). The Literature Book (First American ed.). New York: DK. p. 21.
王恆偉. (2005) (2006) 中國歷史講堂 #1 遠古至春秋. 中華書局. ISBN 962-8885-24-3. p 4–7.
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Morton, W. Scott Morton. Morton, William Scott. Lewis Charlton M. (2005). China: its history and culture. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-141279-4, ISBN 978-0-07-141279-7, p. 14.
Frayne, Douglas, "Ur-Nammu E3/2.1.1". Ur III Period (2112-2004 BC), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 5-90, 1997
Frankfort, Henri; Roaf, Michael; Matthews, Donald (1996). The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. Yale University Press. p. 107
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Simon of Kéza: The Deeds of the Hungarians (ch. 1.4–5), pp. 13–17