The Assyrians and Babylonians Who Captured and Exported The Jewish People

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are in Mesopotamia, important to our Jewish history because the city of Ur is at the end of the Euphrates which is the city that Abraham was from.  We were originally Mesopotamians because of this. 

They are in the fertile crescent.  The Fertile Crescent runs from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the Arabian Desert in the south, and from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Zagros Mountains. Ancient Mesopotamia is located within the Fertile Crescent, but the Crescent covers more geography than ancient Mesopotamia. Today, the Crescent includes such countries as Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, as well as the Sinai Peninsula and northern Mesopotamia, Turkey and Iran.   The fertile crescent is drained by the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Some even include Egypt.   

It was here in pre-historic times  that hunters first began to gather in and eat the seeds of wild grasses.  They depended on the migrating herds of antelope that criss-crossed the grasslands on their seasonal migrations, but the seeds were plentiful and easy to collect.  -a gathering of the wild harvest even before agriculture began.

                 Ur Ziggurat :  A Neo-Sumerian ziggurat in what was the city of Ur near Nasiriyah, in present-day Dhi Qar Province, Iraq. The structure was built during the Early Bronze Age but had crumbled to ruins by the 6th century BCE of the Neo-Babylonian period, when it was restored by King Nabonidus.

Its remains were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir Leonard Woolley. Under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, they were encased by a partial reconstruction of the façade and the monumental staircase. The Ziggurat of Ur is the best-preserved of those known from Mesopotamia, besides the ziggurat of Dur Untash (Chogha Zanbil). It is one of three well-preserved structures of the Neo-Sumerian city of Ur, along with the Royal Mausolea and the Palace of Ur-Nammu (the E-hursag). One of his most dramatic discoveries, royal tombs dating from about 2700 BC, disclosed the practice of the sacrificial burial of a deceased king’s personal retinue. With the help of contributors, he began publishing a projected 10 volumes of Ur Excavations in 1927. His other books include The Sumerians (1928), Ur of the Chaldees (1929), and Digging up the Past (1930).                                                             

 

        An Ur Ziggurat  when Abraham lived there:  The ziggurat was a piece in a temple complex that served as an administrative center for the city, and which was a shrine of the moon god Nanna, the patron deity of Ur.  The construction of the ziggurat was finished in the 21st century BCE by King Shulgi who existed way before Abraham (1948 BCE) , who, in order to win the allegiance of cities, proclaimed himself a god. During his 48-year reign, the city of Ur grew to be the capital of a state controlling much of Mesopotamia. Many ziggurats were made by stacking mud-bricks up and using mud to seal them together. 

At the beginning of the two rivers, actually the Tigris,  lay Assyria which was inhabited by the people who attacked Samaria, the northern half of Israel in 721 BCE and carried away 27,290 of the best part of the population.  

It had been the House of Shalmaneser III and his subsequent heirs of the Assyrians who had been of this aggressive kingdom since the 20th century BCE.  They had been victorious from the 13th to 10th centuries when our kings David and Solomon fought against the Aramean states in Mesopotamia and Syria.  

             Battle between the Sumerians (left) and the Semites led by Sargon (king of Assyria from 721 to 712 BCE), armed with bows and arrows (20th century depiction).  Sumeria was a region of S. Babylonia named after a non-Semitic people which migrated there in prehistoric times and founded a series of city states.  Its culture was the basis of Babylonian civilization and influenced the Semitic people of Akkad to their nation.  Nimrod and Cush are connected with Sumerian tradition.  

Samaria was the land of Israel.  Originally, it was only the city-the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, founded by King Omri (887-876 BCE) on a hill bought from Shemer (I Kings 16:24)  It was 7 mi. NW of Shechem (Nablus) made up of 25 acres.  Samaria withstood the siege of the Syrians but fell in 721 BCE to Sargon II of Assyria who resettled it with Cutheans who mixed in with remnants of former population left there.  

 These people were idol-worshipers, and it was said that  G‑d sent lions to decimate them, as they hadn't seen lions before and had  great fear of them, as I would have had.. Out of fear of the lions, the Cutheans converted to Judaism, but the rabbis of the Talmud debated whether their conversion was valid or not. The Cutheans’ Torah observance was spotty — extremely strong in some areas, but very weak or nonexistent in others.All then became ancestors of the Samaritans.  

The name, SAMARIA,  is now applied to  the entire northern region instead of ISRAEL, of central highlands of the land which the Romans had then renamed as Palestine and since 1948 is again Israel.                                   

King Hoshea of Israel (last ruler of Israel, (reigned from 732-724 BCE) in 726 BCE tried to throw off the yoke  led to Shalmaneser V's siege of Samaria and its capture in 721BCE by his successor, Sargon.  Assyrian records say he had Assyrian help in becoming king. and his kingdom was confined to the surroundings of Mt. Ephraim.  But, he finally rebelled against Assyria and was imprisoned by Shalmaneser who then beseiged and captured Samaria (Kings 17:1-6).  Sargon annexed the country of its people to Assyria and Media and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.  Did either Sargon or Shalmaneser realize that the people they attacked had once been from their own river complex of Ur?  Did they seem to look familiar to them at all?  For the Israelites, Assyrians were a people they had left, escaped from to live a freer life in Canaan.                     

Babylonia was a large city half-way down the Euphrates River.  Babylonia will take the Assyrians later and own the whole river complex.  Babylonia was known in the Bible as the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees)--Ur of the Chaldees.  Genesis tells us it was the cradle of humanity and the scene of man's first revolt against G-d which was the tower of Babel. 

 Abraham had fought against Amraphel, king of Shinar as told in Genesis 14.  He was one of 5 kings who united to attack the rulers of Sodom and were defeated by Abraham.    Amraphel is identified with the great Babylonian lawgiver, Hammurabi by only a few today.    Our prophets thought that Babylonia was a symbol of insolent pagan tyranny.  

 The Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire was the last war fought by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, between 626 and 609 BCE.

The Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BCE) inherited the Assyrian Empire.  He conquered Judah, the southern part of Israel in 597 and 586 BCE.  He also exiled many Jews to Babylon.  The question is if they joined the previous 10 tribes of Jacob from the Assyrian exile?  That would give Mesopotamia a lot of Jewish people.                                     

Cyrus, king of Persia, had allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem and re-build the Temple, but many Jews decided to stay there, especially the younger ones who had never been in Jerusalem.  Actually, Jews had been away from Jerusalem for the past 70 years.  

Ancient Mesopotamia was mostly in the same area as modern day Iraq, positioned between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.  The word Mesopotamia is Greek meaning "the land between the rivers".  Ancient Mesopotamia included an area that was about 300 miles long and about 150 miles wide. These rivers flow into the Persian Gulf.  The land was very fertile.  In the Northern part of Mesopotamia, rivers and streams were fed from the mountains.  In addition, there was a rainy season that helped water the soil.  While the southern region was much hotter and dryer, the two large rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, allowed for irrigation.  The land between the rivers was filled with wildlife and edible vegetation. People who wandered into the area discovered they could plant crops and store food to add to the natural food supply. With the discovery of agriculture, people began to settle down, and build homes and then villages and then towns and then cities.  People developed new inventions to take advantage of the geography, inventions like the first sailboat, the wheel, and the first plow.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medo-Babylonian_conquest_of_the_Assyrian_Empire#:~:text=The%20Medo%2DBabylonian%20conquest%20of,between%20626%20and%20609%20BC.

https://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/geography.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great

Book:  The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes, p. 135

https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/fertile-crescent-explained#:~:text=The%20Fertile%20Crescent%2C%20often%20referred,%2C%20for%20some%20scholars%2C%20Egypt.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonard-Woolley