Abraham's City of Ur; What It Was Like

Nadene Goldfoot                                       

                                                   

        In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad

Abraham was born in the 2nd millennium BCE, which means about 2,000 BCE, or more like the year 1948 BCE.  His father, Terah, had emigrated there from the Euphrates River south to Ur along with others.  Ur is found in Iraq, almost where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join.  This was about 4,000 years ago. Terah was an idol-maker, so he opened up a shop there, making many clay idols.   
                                                          

Terah, father of Abram: Abraham
He left Ur of the Chaldees to travel to Canaan with Abraham and his
nephew, Lot.  On the way they settled in Haran where Terah died. 
Terah was a devout idolator challenged in his beliefs by Abraham.
They had many gods, as it was a polytheistic society.    

Many clay tablets have been found in excavations.  " Many hundreds of clay tablets show how the foreign trade was organized. The “sea kings” of Ur carried goods for export to the entrepôt at Dilmun (Bahrain) and there picked up the copper and ivory that came from the east.  The clay tablets were found in the residential quarter of the city, of which a considerable area was excavated. 
                                                           

Hammurabi-sitting in this relief
"An eye for an eye ..." is a paraphrase of Hammurabi's Code, a collection of 282 laws inscribed on an upright stone pillar. The code was found by French archaeologists in 1901 while excavating the ancient city of Susa, which is in modern-day Iran. (We have 613 laws given us by Moses)
Hammurabi explains his code and himself:
who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind..... 

Hammurabi didn't fool around.  How about this ruling:

If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.

Terah and Abraham lived either under the rule of King Hammurabi of Babylon in about the 18th Century BCE or before.  Hammurabi was a Semite who ruled from 1728-1686 BCE.  He is known for his famous legal code that was only discovered in the beginning of this century.  It concerns many aspects of social life, and its penalties are generally severe, enforcing the JUS TALIONIS (Retaliation authorized by law, or-an eye for an eye).  It resembles the Biblical legislation of Moses that came along several hundred years later.  There are many sections highly improved by Moses.  These differences result from the secular and political nature of Hammurabi's legislation, which is based on custom and obedience to the king's will.  This contrasts to the religious and ethical nature of the Torah with its appeal to the human conscience.  
                                                                

The Dragon belonging to Marduk, god of Babylon 

"Many large state temples were excavated, as were some small wayside shrines dedicated by private persons to minor deities, the latter throwing a new light upon Babylonian religious practices; but the domestic chapels, with their provision for the worship of the nameless family gods, are yet more interesting and have a possible relation to the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs."

For that period, the Hammurabi Code does give people something to measure their behavior by as well as the king, of course.   It was a beginning step that  have even followed something before this time of a uniform legal tradition rooted in Mesopotamian culture.  

The God Marduk and his pet dragon

Oldest Code Known

The oldest known evidence of a law code are tablets from the ancient city Ebla (Tell Mardikh in modern-day Syria). They date to about 2400 B.C.E. — approximately 600 years before Hammurabi put together his famous code.  Ebla (Arabic: إبلا‎, modern: تل مرديخ,  was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh.  

4,500 Years Old Ebla Tablets Confirm the Name of God as Yahweh & Prophets

The Ebla tablets comprise of as many as 1800 complete clay tablets, 4700 fragments and many thousand minor chips were found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla in Syria. The Ebla tablets were discovered by Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974 - 75 during their excavations at the ancient city of Tell Mardikh. They all date to the period between 2500 B.C. and the destruction of the city 2250 B.C. . This Ebla tablet is found at Ebla in Syria. The word Yahwe is found inscribed in the Ebla tablet. The Ebla tablets contain many Semitic names such as Adam, Abraham, Esau, Ishmael, David and Saul. They also discussed the Canaanites and Hittites and refer to ancient Urusalima (Jerusalem), Hazor, Meggido and other cities mentioned in the Bible.

The moon was worshipped by these Babylonian people.  " The excavation at al-ʿUbayd, a suburb of Ur," unearthed "a small temple also of a type previously unsuspected, richly decorated with statuary, mosaics, and metal reliefs and having columns sheathed with coloured mosaic or polished copper. The inscribed foundation tablet of the temple, stating that it was the work of a king of the 1st dynasty of Ur, dated the building and proved the historical character of a dynasty that had been mentioned by ancient Sumerian historians but that modern scholars had previously dismissed as fictitious.   

Sargon II

A few personal inscriptions confirmed the real existence of the almost legendary ruler Sargon I, king of Akkad, who reigned in the 24th century BCE, and a cemetery illustrated the material culture of his time."   A" ziggurat, a three-storied solid mass of mud brick faced with burnt bricks set in bitumen, rather like a stepped pyramid" had  "on its summit a small shrine, the bedchamber of the moon god Nanna (Sin), the patron deity and divine king of Ur."                                                

4th millennium BCE pottery found in Susa
It looks to me that they had invented the pottery wheel.

In an ancient cemetery from an earlier period " kings were buried along with a whole retinue of their court officials, servants, and women, privileged to continue their service in the next world. Musical instruments from the royal tombs, golden weapons, engraved shell plaques and mosaic pictures, statuary and carved cylinder seals, all are a collection of unique importance, illustrating a civilization previously unknown to the historian."  Tombs uncovered  " produced royal tombs containing almost incredible treasures in gold, silver, bronze, and semiprecious stones."

"The houses of private citizens in the Larsa period and under Hammurabi of Babylon (c.18th century BCE, in which period Abraham is supposed to have lived at Ur) were comfortable and well-built two-story houses with ample accommodation for the family, for servants, and for guests, of a type that ensured privacy and was suited to the climate. In some houses was a kind of chapel in which the family god was worshipped and under the pavement of which members of the family were buried. 

By working back to an even earlier period, to the " 4th millennium BCE, the city was founded by settlers thought to have been from northern Mesopotamia, farmers still in the Chalcolithic phase of culture. There is evidence that their occupation was ended by a flood, formerly thought to be the one described in Genesis. From the succeeding “Jamdat Nasr” (Late Protoliterate) phase, a large cemetery produced valuable remains allied to more sensational discoveries made at Erech (Uruk- was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia), situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the dried-up, ancient channel of the Euphrates, some 30 km east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.^[.)                                                                   

Cyrus the Great II died in 529 BCE, King of Persia.   He had conquered many
 places including overrunning the Babylonian Empire which included Eretz
 Yisrael.  He was different than other monarchs in that he had an enlightened
policy towards his subject peoples.  In 538 BCE he granted permission to
the exiles of Judah held captive in Babylon to return to their homeland
of Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of  Solomon that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.
Cyrus was even thought of being the son of Queen Esther, the Jewish
niece of Mordecai written about who saved all the Jews from being slaughtered
by the King's edict-the desire of Haman, Chief Minister of his court.  That would have  made Cyrus's father  King Ahasuerus.   

"The last king to build at Ur was the Achaemenian Cyrus the Great, whose inscription on bricks is similar to the “edict” quoted by the scribe Ezra regarding the restoration of the Temple at Jerusalem. The conqueror was clearly anxious to placate his new subjects by honouring their gods, whatever those gods might be. But Ur was now thoroughly decadent; it survived into the reign of Artaxerxes II, but only a single tablet (of Philip Arrhidaeus, 317 BCE) carries on the story. It was perhaps at this time that the Euphrates changed its course; and with the breakdown of the whole irrigation system, Ur, its fields reduced to desert, was finally abandoned."

Resource:  https://www.britannica.com/place/Ur. 
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-Hammurabi
http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marduk

Jews and Israel: Misconceptions Corrected

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Jews originated long ago with Abraham, his son Isaac, and Abram's grandson, Jacob.  These are our 3 main men.  Abram had an epiphany, realizing back in 2,000 BCE that there was but one G-d in the Universe, a completely different understanding from the people around him including his own father, Terah.  This was over 4,000 years ago, when Egypt was the main country in the world.  Abram lived close by in Ur, today's Iraq.  He and his people had been refugees into that city from back East around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the land of another major country-Assyria.  We can only imagine the horrors that drove this cavalcade of people to Ur.  It's not told to us in the Bible.  Ivrim sounds like Hebrew.  They spoke Hebrew.  In Hebrew, the b and v are the same letter; a bet and a vet.  English from of Hebrew, Ivrim, shows us it comes from either a descendant of Eber, grandson of Shem, or a person who comes from the other side of the River-Euphrates.  Abraham is called THE HEBREW in (Gen. 14:13) and the term was later sometimes used with Israelites (Exod. 9:1).  Habiru and Hebrew should be the same word. His name changed from Abram to Abraham when he reached a level of understanding that was much higher, a reward rather like a college degree.  
                                                                           

Reading the Torah is part of our faith
Written by Moses

We call our faith THE JEWISH FAITH.  Jew comes from the Old French word giu, and the German word Jud which both come from the Roman's Latin language Judaeus which comes from Yehudah or Judah.  The Hebrew language has no J sound.  They use the Y, the yud.
 People often use "Jew" as a verb instead of what it is; a proper noun.  As a verb,it is used perjoratively, nastily, which I do not like at all. 
                                                                             

Moses seeing a burning bush that was not consumed by its fire.
Then he heard a voice.  

They weren't called Jews then.  First, they were the Ivrim, then the Israelites; then the Judeans, and THEN the Jews, from the name of their state, Judah.  Moses never was mentioned, like his followers were never the Mosesites.  He didn't even want people to know where he was buried as he didn't want to be worshipped.  He felt he was just the radio receiver and he just shared what he was told to share.
                                                                               

Egypt: "In 3150 BCE the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by the king Menes (c. 3150 BCE, now believed to be Narmer)."  Moses was a Jewish baby hidden in the Nile riverbanks in a little reed basket by his mother because the pharaoh had a fear of being killed by some Jewish renegade so had all the boy babies of a certain age killed.  Moses was saved by the Pharaoh's daughter, brought up in the court, and returned to the pharaoh's descendant at age 80 to release all slaves into his care.
                                                                           

All slaves included the clan of Jacob-AKA Israel, and OTHERS.  Egypt had taken captives not only the Jews, who had been allowed to live as shepherds in a section of Egypt until they had multiplied so well that their numbers frightened the pharaoh.  He truly was a paranoid pharaoh, always thinking of being killed by someone, and indeed, this did happen a lot to pharaohs.  Moses freed everyone.  He didn't ask to see their passport.  
                                                                             

My own father most likely descended from others, being his DNA (the blessing of being born in today's scientific age) shows that his Y or male line of haplogroup is Q; specifically QBZ67, a very Jewish line, being on 5% of Jews today.  Remnants are even found around Ur!  The most common one comes from Moses's brother, Aaron, who Moses met when an adult.  Moses only had 2 sons who died in their teens, so never did produce a line, but Aaron did.  He had lots of sons.  They had the Y haplogroup of J1, today called the Cohen gene, as Aaron was appointed by Moses to be the 1st Cohen or priest of the some 613 laws to change their lives that he was going to share with the 600,000 some freed slaves who had been enslaved from beginning to end for 400 years.   Abraham was Moses's 3rd great grandfather.   

The Arch of Titus in Rome depicting the Jewish slaves forced to carry the items from
the Temple for the Romans-their loot in this robbery.
 In Germany our surname was
Goldfus.  There are Gentiles with this Goldfuss surname as well, different haplogroup of males.  

One of the big misconceptions people have of Ashkenazi Jews is about our connection to Europe.  Some people actually think we originated as Europeans.  We didn't.  We originated with the family of Jacob or the Israelites on the Exodus.  When the Romans occupied Jerusalem before 70 CE, they were forcing people to do their bidding or they were crucified on huge crosses.  They took slaves and took them to Rome.  This happened especially when they burned down Jerusalem and the Temple.  Jews were marched to Rome.  A few had already settled there as traders.  A reliable record of Jews living in Rome dates back to 139 BCE.  The Catacombs in Rome are also proof that Jews resided in Rome.  My DNA shows that we were connected to a big Jewish family of Rome that was well known.  From Rome, Jews were able to get to Germany and were there for several hundred years, kept out of Judah and Jerusalem by the Romans.  From Germany Jews moved north until finally they reached such places as Poland and Lithuania, seeking acceptance.  They took their Hebrew with them, which is always used in the synagogues for prayers, and in their daily language, mixed with German, became a language called Yiddish.  
                                                                                     

Cohens, the Levites directly from Aaron,
serving in the Temple 

Today we find that the Middle East is full of men carrying J1, even the J1c3d, but among the Jews, it designated those who came from Aaron and the Cohen position in a synagogue.  This shows that the Torah was relating truth of our history.  
                                                                         
I relate all this because in the USA college textbooks, I find misconceptions that Muslim writers have and want those taking a course using them to see facts that were ignored.  Maybe even today's Jews share this misconception.  What I found may be moderate ones compared to others.  I denote a tinge of jealousy.  It wasn't as bad as the textbook makes it sound.  
     1.  One was that Jews think their religion was exclusive, and that Jews were different humans from all others born on earth.  Let me count the ways they listed for us:  
         a. by birth, 
         b. heritage   
         c. the special covenant G-d made with us through Abraham and Moses, and 
         d. territory-Canaan, now called Palestine (I note they left out the name ISRAEL), without any dangers of intermarrying.  The Exodus where Moses led the slaves out of Egypt happened about 3800 years ago, perhaps about 1445 BCE.  
Here's how it all came about.  
What they think about us shows up in how they think we feel about ourselves.  
                                                                           

Jerusalem, the city of King David, allowing Christian and Muslim faiths along with
Jewish.  a state more Democratic than most Western ones today.  Moshe Dyan
actually allowed Jordan to have control over the Temple Mount after the battle
of 1967 when Israel won.  That's because the Muslims had built the mosque with the
Golden Dome over the spot where our 2nd Temple had stood.  Jews pray
at the Wall that used to be called THE WAILING WALL.  

They seem to hold it against us that our toasts often say, NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM.  That they don't understand that it had been our city, our capital.  They feel it's our fault that we haven't been happy in the foreign countries we have found ourselves in.  Let me say this:  from the time King David (1010-970 BCE) created Jerusalem till it was lost to the Romans who destroyed it in 70 CE, we had a country and a capital.  That was over 2,000 years.  Since then we have been living as a minority with a weird religion and people actually have looked for our horns they thought were on our heads.  Talk about misconceptions!  We lost 6 million Jews who were brutally murdered just because they were Jews when Hitler tried to kill all of us.  Others now protest that we have been replaced; no need to have us around anymore.  
                                                                          

What a loving world we are in.  And then there's the Ayatollas ready to complete the job Hitler started and almost succeeded in,  It's not a safe world.  

First, let me mention as a reminder that Abraham's very 1st son, Ishmael, born through Hagar, the Egyptian princess maid for Sarah, Abraham's wife who was his niece, had been so nasty to Sarah's son, Isaac who was born several years later, that Sarah asked that they leave their family group.  Ishmael joined up with the native population.  Later, Esau, the twin of Jacob, left the tribe and also lived among the native population, not wanting to follow Jacob's house rules.  Those house rules finally show up with Mohammad, over 2,000 years later.  

Jews found today share certain Y haplogroups over and over, but there are different ones apart from J1.  We have J1 and J2, E, R, Q, G and a few I found in the male line.  Females have other lines as they are biologically different:  K is a popular one.  Females have far less lines than males.  It's thought that there were 4 basic lines or women who were the progenitors, and they weren't Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, etc, known ones from the Bible necessarily, but at different times.  
                                                                        

Nicene Creed , in Nicaea,Turkey ( now Iznik) in 325 CE in a Christian meeting-with laws beginning to be against Jews who they saw as competitors
who are not allowed to convert others to Judaism now or soon thereafter;
The meeting mostly argued about how they viewed Jesus, and didn't
want to make him too Jewish!  

Jews tried to convert others to Judaism and succeeded with the natives of the land at first, but when Christianity came along in about 300 CE in Constantinople, that ended with the Christians stopping our reaching out since Jews were seen as competitors to Christianity.  They had the help of Rome who had overcome the Jews in 70 CE by burning down Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple.  Romans, led by Queen Helena, became the first Catholics.   
                                                                              

Producing Ergomite

I have shown that Abraham's family led us to being slaves in Egypt and being mixed in with other slaves.  Jews were all taught under Moses the same laws which included that they should live in Canaan.  According to the Torah,  they were chosen by G-d because they were a stiff-necked people.  Others were asked to follow the 10 Commandments  and everyone resisted at least one of the laws,   which is one reason that the sect-the Christians, left the group.  The Jews were the only group that accepted.  Abraham had grown out of acceptance of human sacrifice.  He didn't want his children to marry into such a people.  Do you blame him?  He believed in one G-d, and all other people believed in a pantheon of gods.  No, he wanted to raise a people that were as enlightened as he had become.  
                                                                          

Jewish Wedding and Orthodox Custom
Breaking the glass, marrying under the Chuppah (khuppah) 

By being treated as if all Jews had the cooties, it caused them to intermarry with each other in every generation, and possibly as a result, they became a very intelligent group of people.  Whatever, they are but 0.02% of the world population and have made their mark a positive one in the world in many areas, such as how to fight against terrorists, where other countries are asking them for advice; medicine, science, especially.  They work on saving lives the most while their enemies are trying to take theirs.  Maybe it's because doing good deeds has elevated their IQ level, as they were the same as all others in Ur.  Abram's father, Terah was an idol maker, and it was Abe to pointed out the fallacy of believing in idols to his father.  He was wonderful to his father, even so, as he honored him by taking him with him to live.  As for intermarriage, Muslims marry closer relatives today than Jews, who have a list of people not to intermarry with as being too close. 
                                                                      

 We have Americans from the mountains who have practiced intermarriage of relatives, such as Festus Haggen in GUNSMOKE portrayed.  Love Festus!  He's such a character!  They were too isolated a group to manage to find partners from other places which was the same problem we Jews faced very often.  
                                                                                     

For that matter, Canaan, of long ago was not just the land renamed Palestine by the Romans.  It was made up of small city-states prior to the Israelite Conquest of Joshua.  Moses (1391-1271 BCE) died and Joshua took over, leading the Israelites into Canaan.  The Israelites called the land "Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) and the very northern part of it Aram-today called Syria.  From the 15th century BCE to the 13th century BCE the land we know today as Syria was called The Land of Canaan.  In a more restricted sense it was used to speak of the coast of Palestine after 135 CE.  
                                                                           

It was Abraham who had left Ur of the Chaldees and pitched his tent among the Canaanite and Philistine natives of Eretz Yisrael and then visited Egypt and returned to put his tent up in Hebron, and is only 18 miles south of Jerusalem which still exists today, taken over by the Palestinian Arabs.  It was he who had a vision of G-d who promised him that his descendants would inherit the land "from the river of Egypt (Nile) to the Euphrates,"  Where Abraham and Terah had come from. 
                                                                       

  G-d made a covenant with Abraham and tested his loyalty to him by ordering the sacrifice of Isaac (which the Muslims-who didn't exist till around Mohammad's death of 632 CE, a good 3,000 years later, was Ishmael.)  Being it's Moses  telling the story, I'm going with Isaac.  Ishmael was older than Isaac and he and his mother had already left the family to live in Egypt with possible relatives or even a wife for Ishmael.  
                                                                        

  Isaac lived all his life in Eretz Yisrael.  Being the 2nd of the patriarchs, the son of Abraham, his birth was announced by angels to his parents who had waited so long for him that Sarah had given up hope by turning over Hagar to Abraham.  He was saved from the sacrifice by Divine intervention on Mt. Moriah where it was being performed.  Isaac married Rebecca at age 40 and was  60 when the twins were born.  They were living then on the Negev Desert.  Famine drove them away to pitch their tent in the land of the Philistines along the coastline.  Isaac  was blind in his old age.  
                                                                         

Jacob blessing his 12 sons when dying

Jacob was the youngest of the twins.  He bought his twin, Esau's birthright, a very legal document in those days naming the owner as the legal leader of the tribe with special rights, and caused a riot in the family where Isaac and Rebecca were on opposite sides,  each siding with one of the twins.  The fight caused Jacob to leave the compound and flee to Haran where his Uncle Laban lived.  There he married one of his cousins, thinking it was Rachel, the youngest and prettiest, but it turned out to be Leah!  He had to work for another 7 years to marry Rachel.  When necessary, he also married their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah and through these 4 women he had 12 sons and 1 daughter, Dinah.  The males were the progenitors of the 12 tribes  of Jacob.  Jacob had a wrestling match with an angel and won the match,  causing his name to be  changed to Israel.  They resettled again in Canaan and were there when Rachel's son, Joseph disappeared.  The name, Jacob, has been found in Akkadian and Egyptian sources.  Jacob had moved to Egypt to be near Joseph, but when he died had insisted they move his body back to Canaan and buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron which was a family tomb by now.  
                                                                               

   Moses was from the same line as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Moses was of the tribe of Levi; DNA of J1.  We know this through the descendants of Aaron who were consecrated by Moses to serve in the Tabernacle and to teach people.  This was later transferred to the Temple as Priests.  They taught the Torah to the people and by doing so, inherited no land but received 48 towns with their surrounding area throughout the country and a tithe of the agricultural produce.  This didn't work out too well as the towns and money weren't always available.  Levi was the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah.  It's like believing in pie in the sky by thinking that a minority was left to believe in ancient polytheism.  Later, many would slip back into that, but not right after Joshua succeeded in taking the land.  It would happen closer to the time when the Assyrians attacked northern Israel in 721 BCE.  So from 1271 BCE to 721 BCE, the sum total of 550 years, the people were quite rightous in following the Mosaic Law of the Land.  It's had to take in the concept of that long a period of time being the USA is only 242 years old from 1776 to 2018 and that seems like forever!  Just look how clothing and science has changed since then.  Look what the USA has accomplished! Israel lasted more  as a righteous land than double the age of the USA!   
                                                                           

Joshua leading the Exodus into Canaan 

The natives of Canaan who were alive after the entrance of the Exodus led by Joshua immersed themselves with the Israelites by intermarriage.  Most have been defeated by the army of Joshua, however, who could fight when attacked.   As for any minority left in the land, they were soon converted to the prevailing religion of the land, Judaism.  None of the ancient names of tribes exist anymore.  That tells you something.  Only Jews remain of the ancient people.  If the textbook is trying to make of point of the Palestinians being one of the ancient tribes, forget it.  Read instead, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL by Joan Peters and find out where they came from.  There has not been a country of Palestine, only our Eretz Yisael renamed by the angry Romans in 135 CE.  Both Jews and Arabs were called Palestinians after that and all the time it was land belonging to the Ottoman Empire who had men there collecting taxes and that was about it.  They let the land fall apart, as they didn't care about it.  No one wanted any part of it except the Jews.  
                                                                                

We have stood out in this world like a sore thumb, and it is because we were true to our promise of following the Law of Moses and believe in one G-d only, no matter what in a world that believed in polytheism; many gods.  Even as Christianity swore they believed in one G-d, we keep hearing-THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY GHOST which is of a different math program, evidently, which they add up to one G-d as well, but we care not to buy into it.    Then there is Islam, also people who believe in one G-d today, and yet we've fought or are fighting today over religion as of yesterday!  The messages of all 3 religions are quite different in many aspects, the same in agreement with Judaism in others.  Christianity and Islam are concerned about when we die what will happen and we just try to avoid ever getting there, period, more concerned with the living conditions in the here and now, as it were.  
                                                                              

Roman soldiers in Judah-

Get it?  Jews are Middle Easterners who have had 2/3rd of their people displaced with 1/3 who are the Mizrachim  and had never left the area.  Some were able to stay, some hid out in Spain and got caught in the 1492 Spanish Inquisition and the rest were in Europe, trapped in the Holocaust.  The Romans were the cause of all our grief, having destroyed our Temple and city of Jerusalem.  The Jewish people have waited patiently for over 2,000 years to return, never forgetting and yearning for their homeland.  
                                                                                

Pashtuns visiting Jerusalem 

One of these days, all the missing northern Israelites will again rejoin with their southern Judean cousins and then the rabbis will be most happy, for scripture will be fulfilled.  How it's going to happen is another question for another day.  the 10 Lost Tribal members have been slowly showing up already from many parts of the globe, readily proving who their ancestors had been, wanting to live in Israel or exploring the idea.  One of the last are the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.  It's one of the surprises that bring chills down our spines in finding these tribal members who are so eager to be known to Israelis.  Anytime our Tanakh is proven to be correct and prophecies are coming true makes us FEEL ITS SPIRITUAL PRESENCE.   


Resource: College Textbook:  Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Ricks, 2nd Edition, 1986, 1970 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. New Jersey, p. 228-229 on Zionism
 https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed
https://amenvamen.com/jewish-wedding-traditions/#The_Chuppah