10 - ROYAL DREAMS, FATEFUL ORACLES

"To sleep, perchance to dream," says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - a tragedy in which an apparition of the murdered king is seen by Hamlet in a vision, and celestial omens come to play. In the ancient Near East dreams were not considered a matter of chance; they were all, to varying degrees, Divine Encounters: in the least, omens that portend things to come; throughout, channels for conveying divine will or instructions; and in the utmost, carefully staged and premeditated epiphanies.

According to the ancient scriptures, dreams have accompanied Earthlings from the very beginning of Humankind, starting from the First Mother, Eve, who had an omen-dream about the slaying of Abel. After the Deluge, when Kingship was instituted to create both a barrier and a link between the Anunnaki and the mass of people, it was the kings whose dreams accompanied the course of human affairs. And then, when human leaders strayed, the Divine Word was conveyed through the dreams and visions of Prophets. Within that long record of dreams and visions, some, as we have seen, stand out by crossing into the Twilight Zone, where the unreal becomes real, a metaphysical object assumes a physical existence, an unspoken word becomes a voice actually heard.

The Bible is replete with records of dreams as a major form of Divine Encounter, as channels for conveying the deity’s decision or advice, benevolent promise or strict verdict. Indeed, in Numbers 12:6, Yahweh is quoted as explicitly stating (to the brother and sister of Moses) that "if there be a prophet among you" - a person chosen to convey God’s word - "I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision and will speak unto him in a dream." The significance of the statement is enhanced by the precision of the wording: In a vision Yahweh makes himself known, recognizable, visible; in a dream he makes himself heard, granting oracles.

Informative in this regard is the tale in I Samuel chapter 28. Saul, the Israelite king, faced a crucial battle with the Philistines. The Prophet Samuel, who on Yahweh’s command had anointed Saul king and had provided him with the Lord’s word, has died. The apprehensive Saul is trying to obtain divine guidance on his own; but although he had "inquired of Yahweh" "both by dreams and by omens and by prophets," Yahweh did not respond. In this instance, dreams are listed as the first or foremost method of divine communication; omens - celestial signs or unusual terrestrial occurrences - and oracles, divine words through prophets, follow.

The manner in which Samuel himself had been chosen to become a Prophet of Yahweh also hinges on the use of dream for divine communication. It was a sequence of three "theophany dreams" in which scholars, such as Robert K. Gnuse (The Dream Theophany of Samuel), find remarkable parallels to the three dreams-cum-awakenings of Gilgamesh.

We have already mentioned how Samuel’s mother, unable to bear children, promised to dedicate the child to Yahweh if she be blessed with a son. Keeping her vow, the mother brought the boy to Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept in a temporary shrine under the supervision of Eli the Priest. But since Eli’s sons were lewd and promiscuous, Yahweh decided to choose the pious Samuel as successor to Eli.

It was a time, we read in I Samuel 3:1, when "the word of Yahweh was seldom heard and a vision was not frequent."

And it came to pass on that day
that Eli was lying in his usual place,
and his eyes began to wax dim
and he could not see.
The lamp of Elohim did not yet go out;
and Samuel was lying in the sanctuary
of Yahweh, where the Ark of Elohim was.

And Yahweh called out to Samuel;

and Samuel answered

"Here I am, and ran to Eli, saying:

"Here I am, for thou hast called me."

But Eli said no, he had not called Samuel, and told the boy to go back to sleep. Once again Yahweh called Samuel, and once again Samuel went to Eli only to be told that the priest did not call him. But when that happened the third time, "Eli understood that it was Yahweh calling the boy."

So he instructed him to answer, if it ever happens again, "Speak O Yahweh, for thy servant listens." And thereafter "Yahweh came, and stood upright, and called ‘Samuel, Samuel’ from time to time; and each time Samuel answered ‘speak, for thy servant listens’." An artist in thirteenth century A.D. in France did his best to depict the first dream theophany and the final Divine Encounter of Samuel with Yahweh in a medieval illustrated Bible (Fig. 70).

Figure 70
 

It will be recalled that the Divine Spirit that provided King David with the Tavnit and written instructions for the Jerusalem Temple came upon him as he sat himself before the Ark of the Covenant. The call upon Samuel also occurred as "he was lying in the sanctuary of Yahweh, where the Ark of Elohim was." The Ark, made of acacia wood and inlaid with gold inside and out, was intended to safekeep the two Tablets of the Law.

But its main purpose, as stated in the Book of Exodus, was to serve as a Dvir - literally, a "Speaker." The Ark was to be topped by the two Cherubim made of solid gold, with their wings touching (the two possibilities of this detail are illustrated in Fig. 71).

Figure 71
 

"It is there that I shall keep appointments with you," Yahweh told Moses, "and I will speak to you from above the cover, from between the two Cherubim which shall be upon the Ark" (Exodus 25:22). The innermost part of the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, was separated from the forepart by a veil that could not be parted except by Moses and then by his brother Aaron, who was appointed by Yahweh to serve as High Priest, and the three sons of Aaron, who were anointed as priests. And they were to enter the sacred place only after performing certain rites and wearing special clothing.

Furthermore, when these consecrated priests would enter the Holy of Holies, they had to burn incense (whose composition was also strictly prescribed by the Lord) so that a cloud would engulf the Ark; for, Yahweh told Moses, "it is in the cloud that I shall appear, above the Ark’s cover." But when two of Aaron’s sons "brought near before the Lord a strange fire," one that (presumably) failed to create the proper cloud, "a fire went out from before Yahweh and consumed them."

Such "supernatural" forces, bringing to pass the dream-oracle of Samuel and the dream-vision of David, continued to permeate the Tabernacle even after the Ark itself was moved out, as evidenced by the dream-oracle of Solomon. Ready to commence the building of the Temple, he went to Gibeon, the latest resting place of the Tent of Appointment (the part of the Residence where the Holy of Holies was).

The Ark itself had already been moved to Jerusalem by David, in anticipation of placing it in its permanent location within the future Temple; but the Tent of Appointment remained in Gibeon, and Solomon went there - perhaps just to worship, perhaps to see for himself some details of the construction.

He offered sacrifices to Yahweh and went to sleep; and then -

And it was in Gibeon
that Yahweh appeared unto Solomon
in a nighttime dream.
And Elohim said:
"Ask what I shall give thee."

The epiphany developed into a two-way conversation in which Solomon asked to be granted "an understanding heart to judge my people, that I may discern between good and bad." Yahweh liked the answer, for Solomon had asked neither for riches nor for long life, nor for the death of his enemies. Therefore, said Yahweh, he would grant him extraordinary Wisdom and Understanding, as well as riches and long life.

And Solomon awoke, and lo - it was a dream!

Although the relevant section in the Bible begins with the statement that it was a dream epiphany, the vision and dialogue seemed so real to Solomon that when the conversation came to an end, Solomon was astounded that it was only a dream; and he did realize that what had taken place represented a reality, with lasting effects: thereafter he was indeed endowed with extraordinary Wisdom and Understanding.

In a verse that indicates familiarity with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations at that time, the Bible added that "the wisdom of Solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the Sons of the East and of all of the wisdom of Egypt."

Whereas in the Sinai it was Yahweh who selected and instructed two artisans to carry out the intricate and artful architectural details, "filling up with the Spirit of Elohim, with wisdom and understanding and knowledge" Bezalel of the tribe of Judah and "putting wide wisdom in the heart" of Aholiab of the tribe of Dan, Solomon relied on the artisans of the Phoenician king of Tyre for the required experts.

And when the Temple was completed, Solomon prayed to the Lord Yahweh that He accept the House as an eternal abode and as a place from which the prayers of Israel would be heard. It was then that Solomon had his second dream epiphany: "Yahweh appeared unto Solomon for the second time, in the manner seen to him in Gibeon."

Although the Temple in Jerusalem was literally called a "house" for the Lord, echoing the Sumerian term "E" for the temple-house, it is evident from the prayer of Solomon that he did not share the Mesopotamian view of temples as actual divine dwelling places, but rather as a sacred place for divine communication, a place where Man and God can hear each other, a permanent substitute for the desert Tent of Appointment for the Divine Presence.

No sooner had the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant into its place in the Holy of Holies, "the Dvir section of the Temple" and put it "under the wings of the Cherubim," than they had to leave hurriedly "on account of the cloud of Yahweh’s Glory that filled the House." It was then that Solomon began his prayer, addressing

"Yahweh, who would dwell in the dark cloud."

"The heavens are thy dwelling place," Solomon said;

"would Elohim then come to dwell on Earth? If the heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, would this House that I have built?"

Realizing that, Solomon asked only for the Lord to hear the prayers that emanate from the temple; "hear in your dwelling place, in the heavens, the prayers and supplications, and judge the people accordingly."

It was then "that Yahweh appeared unto Solomon for a second time, in the manner that he was seen to him in Gib-eon. And Yahweh said to him: I have heard thy prayer and thy supplications that thou hast made before me, and have sanctified this House that thou hast built, to place my Shem in it forever, so that my eyes and my heart shall be there in perpetuity."
The term Shem is traditionally translated "name," that by which someone is known or remembered.

But as we have shown in The 12th Planet, quoting biblical, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian sources, the term paralleled the Sumerian MU that, though in time it came to mean "that by which one is remembered," originally referred to the Skychambers or flying machines of the Mesopotamian Gods. Thus, when the people of Babylon {Bab-Ili, "Gateway of the Gods") set out to build the tower so as to make a Shem for themselves, they were building a launch tower not for a "name" but for skyborne vehicles.

In Mesopotamia, it was upon the temple platforms that special enclosures - some depicted as designed to withstand heavy impacts - were built specifically to serve the coming and going of these skychambers. Gudea had to provide in the sacred precinct such a special enclosure for the Divine Black Bird of Ninurta, and when the construction was done expressed the hope that the new temple’s "MU shall hug the lands from horizon to horizon."

A hymn to Adad/Ishkur extolled his "ray-emitting MU that can attain the heaven’s zenith," and a hymn to Inanna/lshtar described how, after putting on the pilot’s garb (see Fig. 32), "over all the peopled lands she flies in her MU." In all these instances the usual translation is "name" for MU, reading for Adad a "name" that hugs the lands and attains the highest heavens, for Inanna/lshtar that "over all the peopled lands she flies in her name." In fact, however, the reference was to the Gods’ flying machines and their landing pads within the sacred precincts.

One depiction of such aerial vehicles, discovered by archaeologists excavating in behalf of the Vatican at Tell Ghassul across the Jordan River from Jericho, bring to mind the Chariot that Ezekiel described (Fig. 72).

Figure 72
 

In his instructions for building the original ziggurat-temple in Babylon, the E.SAG.IL ("House of the Great God"), Marduk specified the requirements for the skychamber:

Construct the Gateway of the Gods .. .
Let its brickwork be fashioned.
Its Shem shall be in the designated place.

In time, because of the deterioration that afflicted all these stage-towers that were built of clay bricks as well as as a result of deliberate destruction by enemy attackers, temples required restoring and rebuilding. One instance concerning the Esagil, reported in the annals of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.) contains several other key elements of the royal dreams recorded in the Bible in regard to the Temple in Jerusalem. These recurring elements include the Wisdom granted to Solomon, the architectural instructions, and the need for artisans to be divinely inspired or trained so as to understand these instructions.

Esarhaddon, here seen on his stela on which the twelve members of the Solar System are depicted by their symbols (Fig. 73), reversed previous Assyrian policy of confrontation and war with Babylon and saw no harm in revering Marduk (the national God of Babylon) in addition to worshiping Ashur (Assyria’s national God). "Both Ashur and Marduk gave me wisdom," Esarhaddon wrote, granting him "the exalted understanding of Enki" for the task of "civilizing" - conquering and subjugating - other nations. He was also instructed by oracles and omens to start a program of temple restorations, beginning with Marduk’s temple in Babylon. But the king knew not how.

Figure 73

It was then that Shamash and Adad appeared to Esarhaddon in a dream in which they showed the king the temple’s architectural plans and construction details. In answer to his bafflement, they told him to gather all the needed masons, carpenters, and other artisans and lead them to the "House of Wisdom" in Ashur (the Assyrian capital city). They also told him to consult a seer regarding the right month and day in which to start the building work.

Acting on what "Shamash and Adad had shown me in the dream," Esarhaddon wrote, he assembled the workforce and marched at their head to the "Place of Knowing." Consulting a seer, on the auspicious day the king carried on his head the foundation stone and laid it in the precise olden spot. With a mold made of ivory he fashioned the first brick. As the rebuilt temple was completed, he installed in it ornate doors of cypress wood overlaid with gold, silver, and bronze; he fashioned golden vessels for the sacred rites. And when all was done, the priests were summoned, sacrifices were offered, and the prescribed temple service was renewed.

The language employed in the Bible to describe the unexpected realization by Solomon, suddenly awakened, that the experienced sight and sound were just a dream, duplicated an earlier instance of such a sudden realization - that of a Pharaoh:

And Pharaoh awoke, and lo - it was a dream!

It was the dream series, described in chapter 41 of Genesis, that began with the Pharaoh’s dream of seven cows - some translations prefer the more archaic-sounding "kine" - "of good appearance and fat-fleshed," that came up out of the Nile River to pasture.

They were followed by seven "ill-favored and lean of flesh" cows; and the latter ate up the former. In a following dream the Pharaoh saw seven ears of corn, "rank and good," grow on one stalk, followed by seven thin and wind-withered ears of corn; and the latter swallowed the former.

"And the Pharaoh awakened, and lo - it was a dream."

The envisioned double scene was so real that the awakened Pharaoh was astonished to realize that it was just a dream. Troubled by the reality of the dream, he summoned the sages and magicians of Egypt to tell him the meaning of the dream; but none could offer an interpretation.

Thus began the rise to prominence in Egypt of the Hebrew youth Joseph, who, wrongfully imprisoned, interpreted correctly the dreams that two of the Pharaoh’s ministers, also in prison, had. Now one of them, the Chief Wine Steward who was reinstated to his position, told that to the Pharaoh and suggested that Joseph be summoned to help solve the Pharaoh’s two dreams. And Joseph said to the Pharaoh: The two dreams are but one single dream; "that which the Elohim will be doing to the Pharaoh has been told."

It was, in other words, an omen-dream, a divine revelation of what will happen in the future by God’s design. It is a foretelling of seven years of plenty that will be overwhelmed by the subsequent seven years of shortages and hunger, he said: "That which Elohim will be doing did He reveal to Pharaoh." And the dream was repeated twice, he added, because "the thing is firmly resolved by the Elohim, who will hasten it to come to pass."

Now then, realizing that Joseph was possessed of the "Spirit of Elohim," the Pharaoh appointed him Overseer over all the Land of Egypt to help avert the hunger. And Joseph found ways to double and treble the crops during the seven plentiful years, and stored the food. And when the famine came, "affecting all the lands," there was food in Egypt.

Although the Bible does not identify the Pharaoh of Joseph’s time by name, other biblical data and chronologies have enabled us to identify him as Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty, who reigned over Egypt from 1850 to 1800 B.C. His granite statue (Fig. 74) is on display in the Cairo Museum.

Figure 74
 

The biblical tale of this Pharaoh’s dream of the seven cows undoubtedly echoes Egyptian beliefs that seven cows, called the Seven Hathors (after the Goddess Hathor, who, as we have mentioned, was depicted as a cow) could foretell the future - forerunners of the Sibylline oracle Goddesses of the Greeks. Nor is the very notion of seven lean years a biblical invention, for such cycles in the level of the waters of the Nile - the only source of water in rainless Egypt - continue to our own times. In fact, there exists an earlier Egyptian record of such a cycle of seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years.

It is a hieroglyphic text (transcribed by E.A.W. Budge in Legends of the Gods - Fig. 75); it relates that the Pharaoh Zoser (Circa 2650 B.C.) received a royal dispatch from the governor of Upper Egypt, in the south, of a grave famine, because "the Nile had not come in for the space of seven years."

Figure 75
 

So the king "extended his heart back to the beginnings," and asked the Chamberlain of the Gods, the Ibis-headed God Thoth, "What is the birthplace of the Nile? Is there a God there, and who is that God?" And Thoth answered that there indeed was a God who regulates the waters of the Nile from two caverns (Fig. 76) and that he was his father Khnum (alias Ptah, alias Enki), the God who had fashioned Mankind (see Fig. 4).

Figure 76
 

How exactly Zoser managed to speak to Thoth and receive his answer is not made clear in the hieroglyphic text. The text does tell us that once Zoser had been told that the God in whose hands the- fate of the Nile and Egypt’s sustenance was Khnum, residing far away on the island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt, the king knew what to do: he went to sleep ... Expecting an epiphany, he had one:

And as I slept, with life and satisfaction, I discovered the God standing over against me!

In his sleep - dreaming, envisioning - Zoser says, "I propitiated him with praise; I prayed to him in his presence," asking for the restoration of the Nile’s waters and the land’s fertility. And the God Revealed himself to me. Concerning me, with friendly face, these words he declared: "I am Khnum, thy fashioner."

The God announced that he would heed the king’s prayers if the king would undertake to "rebuild temples, to restore what is ruined, and to hew out new shrines" for the deity. For that, the God said, he will be giving the king new stones as well as "hard stones which have existed from the beginning of time."

Then the God promised that in exchange he would open the sluices in two caverns that are beneath his rock chamber and that as a result the waters of the Nile will begin to flow again. Within a year, he said, the river’s banks will be green again, plants will grow, starvation will disappear. And when the God finished speaking, and his image vanished, Zoser "awoke refreshed, my heart relieved of weariness," and decreed permanent rites of offerings to Khnum in eternal gratitude.

The God Ptah and a vision of him is the central theme of two other Egyptian dream epiphanies; one of them brings to mind the biblical tales of the woman who cannot bear a male heir.

The first, describing how a Divine Encounter turned the tide of warfare, is contained in a long inscription by the Pharaoh Merenptah (circa 1230 B.C.) on the fourth pylon in the great temple in Karnak. Though the son of the warring Pharaoh Ramses II, Merenptah found it beyond his capabilities to protect Egypt from a rising tide of invaders, both by land (Libyans from the west) and by sea ("pirates" from across the Mediterranean).

The warfare reached its culmination when Libyan forces reinforced by the "pirates" were poised to seize Memphis, the olden capital of Egypt. Merenptah, desponded, was ill prepared to face the attackers. Then, in the night before the decisive battle, he had a dream. In the dream the God Ptah appeared; promising the king victory, the God said: "Take this now!" and with those words handed to Merenptah a sword, saying further: "and banish from yourself your troubled heart."

The hieroglyphic text is partly damaged at this point, making it unclear what happened next; but the inference is that as Merenptah awoke, he found the divine sword physically in his hand. Reassured by the God’s words and the divine sword, Merenptah led his troops to battle; it resulted in a complete victory for the Egyptians.

In the other instance wherein Ptah appears, it was in a dream by a princess (Taimhotep) who was the wife of the High Priest. She bore three daughters but no male heir, wherefor she "prayed to the majesty of this august God, great of wonders and able to give a son to one who has none."

One night, as the High Priest was asleep, Ptah "came to him in a revelation" and said to the High Priest that in exchange for carrying out certain construction works, "I shall make you in return for it a male child."

On this the high priest awoke
and kissed the ground of this august God.
He commissioned the prophets, the chiefs
of mysteries, the priests, and the
sculptors of the House of Gold,
to carry out at once the beneficent work.

The construction work was carried out in accordance with the wishes of Ptah; and after that, the princess states in the inscription, she became pregnant and did bear a male child.

Though not in its details but in its essential theme, the Egyptian tale (from Ptolmeic times) bears a resemblance to the much earlier biblical record of the appearance of the Lord, accompanied by two other divine beings, to Abraham and predicting that his aging and childless wife Sarah will bear a male heir.

Among other instances of royal oracle dreams found in Egyptian records, the most famous is that by the prince who later ascended the throne to be crowned as Thothmes IV. His dream is well-known because he describes it on a stela that he had erected between the paws of the great Sphinx in Giza - where it still stands for all to see.

As recorded on the stela (Fig. 77), the prince "used to occupy himself with sport on the desert highland of Memphis." One day he lay to rest near the necropolis of Gizah, next to "the divine way of the Gods to the horizon ... the holy place of primeval times." That, the inscription says, was where "the very great statue of the Sphinx rests, great of fame, majestic of awe."

Figure 77
 

It was noontime, the sun was strong; so the prince chose to lie down in the shadow of the Sphinx, and he fell asleep.
As he was sleeping, he heard the Sphinx speak "with his own mouth, saying:"

Look at me, my son, Thothmose ...
Behold, my state is that of one in need,
my whole body is going to pieces.
The sands of the desert above which I had stood
have encroached upon me . . .

What the Sphinx was saying to the sleeping prince was a request that the desert sands that had engulfed the Sphinx and covered most of it - a situation not unlike that found by Napoleon’s men in the nineteenth century (Fig. 78) - be removed so that the Sphinx could be seen in its full majesty.

Figure 78
 

In exchange, the Sphinx - representing the God Harmakhis - promised him that he would be the successor on Egypt’s throne. "When the Sphinx finished these words," the inscription continues, "the king’s son awoke." Though it was a dream, its contents and meaning were crystal clear to the prince. "He understood the speech of this God." At first opportunity he carried out the divine request, to clear the Sphinx of the sands that buried it almost completely; and indeed, in 1421 B.C., the prince ascended Egypt’s throne to become Thothmes IV.

Such a divine nomination to Kingship was not unique in Egyptian annals. In fact, it has been recorded in connection with a predecessor, Thothmes III. The tale of miraculous happenings and a vision of the "Glory of the Lord" has been inscribed by this king on the temple walls in Karnak. In this case the God did not speak out; rather, he indicated his choice of a future monarch through the "working of miracles."

As Thothmes himself related it, when he was still a youth training as a priest, he was standing in the colonnaded part of the temple. Suddenly, the God Amon-Ra appeared in his glory from the horizon.

"He made heaven and Earth festive with his beauty; then he began to perform a great marvel: he directed his rays into the eyes of Horus-of-the-Horizon" (the Sphinx).

The king offered the arriving God incense, sacrifices, and oblations, and led the God into the temple in a procession. As the God walked by the young prince, Thothmes reported,

He really recognized me and he halted. I touched the ground; I bowed myself down in his presence. He stood me up, set me before the king.

Then, as an indication that this prince was the divinely chosen one for the succession, the God "worked a marvel" over the prince. What ensued, Thothmes III wrote, as incredible as it sounds, as mysterious these things are, really happened:

He opened for me the doors of Heaven;
He spread open for me the portals of its horizon.
I flew up to the sky as a Divine Falcon,
able to see his mysterious form
which is in Heaven,
that 1 might adore his majesty.
[And] I saw the being-form of the
Horizon God in his mysterious
Ways of Heaven.

On this heavenly flight, Thothmes III wrote in his annals, he "was made full with the Understanding of the Gods." The experience, and its claims, surely bring to mind the heavenly ascents of Enmeduranki and Enoch, and the "Glory of Yahweh" seen by the Prophet Ezekiel.

The conviction that dreams were divine oracles, foretelling things to come, was a firmly held belief throughout the ancient Near East. Ethiopian kings also believed in the power of dreams as guidelines for actions to be taken (or avoided) and of events about to happen.

One instance, recorded on a stela by the Ethiopian king Tanutamun, relates that in the first year of his reign "his majesty saw a dream in the night." In the dream the king saw "two serpents, one on his right, one on his left." The vision was so real that when the king awoke, he was astonished not to find the serpents actually beside him. He called the priests and seers to interpret the dream, and they said that the two serpents represented two Goddesses, representing Upper and Lower Egypt.

The dream, they said, meant that he could conquer the whole of Egypt "in its length and in its breadth; there is no other to share it with you." So the king "went forth, and a hundred thousand followed him," and he conquered Egypt. So, he wrote on the stela commemorating the dream and its aftermath, "true indeed was the dream."

A divine oracle given by the God Amon, though in broad daylight rather than in a dream, is reported in an inscription on a stela found in Upper Egypt near the Nubian border. It relates that when an Ethiopian king was leading his army into Egypt, he suddenly died. His commanders were "like a herd without a herdsman." They knew that the next king had to be chosen from among the king’s brothers, but which one?

So they went to the Temple of Amon to obtain an oracle. After the "prophets and major priests" performed the required rites, the commanders presented one of the king’s brothers to the God, but there was silence. They then presented the second brother, born to the king’s sister. This time the God spoke up, saying: "He is your king ... He is your ruler." So the commanders crowned this brother, who assumed the Kingship after the deity assured him of divine support.

This tale of the selection of a successor to the Ethiopian king includes a detail that usually goes unnoticed - the fact that the divinely chosen successor was the son born to the king by his sister. We find a parallel in the biblical tale of Abraham and his beautiful wife Sarah, whom Abimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar, fancied.

Once before, when they visited the Pharaoh’s court in Egypt, when the Pharaoh wished to take Sarah away from Abraham, Abraham asked her to say that she was his sister (not his wife) so that his life would be spared. Wisened by the experience, Abraham again asked Sarah to say that she was only a sister of Abraham. But when Abimelech proceeded with his plan, the Lord intervened:

And Elohim came to Abimelech
in a nighttime dream, saying to him:
"Indeed thou shalt the on account of the
woman whom thou hast taken, for she is
a man’s wife.

"And Abimelech did not come near her," explaining to the Lord that he was innocent, for Abraham "did say to me, ‘She is my sister’ and she too hath said, ‘He is my brother’."

So "Elohim said to him, in the dream," that if so he would not be punished as long as he returned Sarah to Abraham untouched. Afterward, when Abimelech demanded an explanation from Abraham, Abraham explained that fearing for his life he did tell the truth but not the whole truth: "Indeed she is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, so she could become my wife." By being his half sister Sarah assured that her son (Isaac), even if not the Firstborn, would be the successor. These rules of succession, emulating the customs of the Anunnaki themselves, prevailed throughout the ancient Near East (and were even copied by the Incas in Peru).

The Philistines called their principal deity Dagon, a name or epithet that can be translated as "He of the Fishes" - the God of Pisces, an attribute of Ea/Enki. This identification, however, is not so clear-cut and certain, because when this deity appears elsewhere in the ancient Near East, his name is spelled Dagan, which could mean "He of the Grains" - a God of farming. Whatever his true identity, this God featured in several omen-dreams reported in the state archives of the kingdom of Mari, a city-state that flourished at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. until its destruction by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in 1759 B.C.

One report from Mari pertains to a dream whose contents were deemed so significant that it was at once brought by messenger to the attention of Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari. In the dream the man saw himself journeying with others. Arriving at a place called Terqa, he entered the temple to Dagan and prostrated himself. At that moment the God "opened his mouth" and asked the traveler whether a truce had been declared between the forces of Zimri-Lim and those of the Yaminites.

When the traveler answered in the negative, the God complained why he had not been kept abreast of developments and instructed the dreamer to take a message to the king, demanding that he send messengers to update the God on the situation. "This is what this man saw in his dream," the urgent report to the king stated, adding that "this man is trustworthy."
 

Another dream concerning Dagan and the wars in which Zimri-Lim was engaged was reported by a temple priestess. In the dream, she stated, "I entered the temple of the Goddess Belet-ekallim ("Mistress of Temples") but she was not in residence nor did I see me statues presented to her. As I saw this I began to weep."

Then I heard "an eery voice crying, saying over and over again: ‘Come back, O Dagan, come back, O Dagan!’ This it was crying over and over." Then the voice became more ecstatic, filling the temple of the Goddess with the voice, saying:

"O Zimri-Lim, do not go on an expedition, stay in Mari, and then I alone will take responsibility."

The Goddess who spoke out in this dream, offering to do the fighting for the beleaguered king, is named in the report Annunitum, a Semitic rendering of Inanna, i.e. Ishtar. Her reported willingness to so act for Zimri-Lim makes historical sense, for she was the one who anointed Zimri-Lim to be king of Mari - a divine act that was commemorated in the magnificent murals found in the palace of Mari (Fig. 79) when it was unearthed by French archaeologists.

Figure 79
 

The priestess who had reported the dream as related, Addu-duri by name, was an oracle priestess. In her report she pointed out that while her oracles were based in the past on "signs," this was the first time she had had an oracle dream. Her name is mentioned in another dream report, but this time of a dream by a male priest in which he saw the Goddess of Oracles speak to him about the king’s "negligence in guarding himself." (In other instances oracle priestesses reported to the king divine messages obtained while they were in a self-induced trance, rather than sleeping and dreaming).

Mari was situated on the Euphrates River where Syria and Iraq meet today, and served as the way station from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean coastlands (and thence to Egypt) on a route that crossed the Syrian desert to the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon. (A longer route but through the Fertile Crescent led via Harran on the Upper Euphrates).

No wonder, then, that the Canaanites of the coastal lands, as their neighbors the Philistines, believed in (and reported) dreams as a form of Divine Encounter. Though their writings (of which we know primarily from finds in Ras Shamra, the ancient Ugarit, on the Mediterranean coast in Syria) dealt mostly with legends or "mydis" of the God Baal, his companion the Goddess Anat, and their father the aging God El, they do mention oracle dreams by patriarchal heroes.

Thus, in the Tale of Aqhat, a patriarch by name of Danel who is without a male heir is told by El in a dream-omen that he would have a son within a year - just as Abraham was told by Yahweh regarding the birth of Isaac. (When the boy, Aqhat, grows up, Anat lusts for him and, as she had done with Gilgamesh, promises him longevity if he would become her lover. When he refuses, she causes him to be slain).

Dreams as a venerated form of divine communication were also recorded in the lands on the Upper Euphrates and all the way into Asia Minor. With the coastal lands that are nowadays Israel, Lebanon, and Syria serving both as a land bridge as well as a battlefield between contending Egyptian Pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings - each claiming to act on orders of their Gods - no wonder that in that meeting and melting zone the omen-dreams also reflected the clash of cultures and mixing of omens.

Egyptian records of royal omen-dreams include a text known to scholars as the Legend of the Possessed Princess - one of the oldest records, inter alia, of exorcism. Written on a stela that is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, it tells how the Prince of Bekhten (the land Bactria on the Upper Euphrates), who had married an Egyptian princess, sought the help of the Pharaoh Ramses II to cure the princess of the "spirits that possessed her." The Pharaoh sent over one of his magicians, but to no avail. So the Prince of Bekhten asked that an Egyptian God "be brought to contend with this spirit."

Receiving the petition in his capital Thebes during a religious festival, the Pharaoh went to the temple of the God Khensu, described as a son of Ra and usually depicted with a falcon’s head on which the Moon rests in its crescent. There the king related to the God, "the great God who expels disease-demons," what the problem was, and requested divine help.

As he spoke, "there was much nodding of the head of Khensu," indicating a favorable hearing. So the king put together a great caravan that went to Bekhten accompanying the God (or his "prophet, the carrier of the plans," or the God’s statue - as some scholars suggest). And using the divine magical powers, the "evil spirit" was exorcised.

Witnessing the magical powers of Khensu, the Prince of Bekhten "then schemed in his heart, saying: I will cause this God to stay here in Bekhten.’ " But having caused a delay in the God’s return to Egypt, while "the Prince of Bekhten was sleeping in his bed," he had a dream. In the dream he saw "this God coming to him outside the shrine. He was a falcon of gold, and he flew to the sky and off to Egypt." The prince "awoke with panic," and realized that the dream was a divine omen, instructing him to let the God return to Egypt. So the prince "let this God proceed to Egypt, after he had given him much tribute of every good thing."

Farther north of Bactria, in the Land of the Hittites in Asia Minor, the conviction that royal dreams were divine revelations was also firmly held. One of the longest extant texts that reflect that conviction is called by scholars The Plague Prayers of Mursilis, a Hittite king who reigned from 1334 to 1306 B.C. As confirmed by historical records, a plague had afflicted the land decimating the population; and Mursilis could not figure out what had angered the Gods. He himself had been pious and deeply religious, "celebrated all the festivals, never preferred one temple for another." So what was wrong?

In desperation, he included the following words in his prayer:

Hearken to me, ye Gods, my lords!
Drive ye forth the plague from the Hittite land!
Let the reason for which the people are dying
be established - either by an omen,
or let me see it in a dream,
or let a prophet declare it.

It should be noted that the three methods of obtaining divine guidance - an oracle dream, an omen, or a communication through a prophet - are exactly the very same three methods listed by King Saul when he had attempted to obtain Yahweh’s guidance. But, exactly as in the case of the Israelite king who received no response, so to the appeals of the Hittite king "the Gods did not hearken; the plague did not get better; the Land of the Hittites continued to be cruelly afflicted."

"Matters were becoming too much for me," Mursilis wrote in this annal, and he redoubled his pious appeals to the God Teshub ("The Windblower" or "Storm God," whom the Sumerians called Ishkur and the Semitic peoples Adad, Fig. 80).

Figure 80

Finally he managed to receive an oracle; since it was neither an omen nor a prophecy, it must have been a dream-oracle, the third method of divine communication with the king. It was thus that Mursilis learned that his father Shuppiliumas, in whose time the plague began, did transgress in two ways: he discontinued certain offerings to the Gods, and he broke his oath in a treaty with the Egyptians to keep the peace, and took Egyptian captives back to Hatti-land; and it was with them that the plague came to nest among the Hittites.

If that was so, the king told Teshub in his supplications, he would offer restitution, "acknowledge his father’s sins," and accept full responsibility. If more repentance or restitution was required, he asked the God again to "let me see it in a dream, or let it be found by an omen, or let a prophet declare it to me."

He thus listed again the three accepted or expected methods of divine communication. Since the text, when found, ends here, one must assume that with that the wrath of Teshub had ended and so did the plague.

Other Hittite inscriptions recording Divine Encounters through dreams and visions have been found. Some of them concern the Goddess Ishtar, the Sumerian Inanna, whose rise to prominence continued well after Sumerian times.

In one such inscription, the Hittite prince who was heir to the throne stated that the Goddess appeared to his father in a dream, telling him that the young prince had only a few years to live; but that if he be dedicated as a priest to Ishtar, "then he shall stay alive." When the king followed the oracle dream, the prince lived on and his brother (Muwatallis) inherited the throne in his stead.

The same Muwatallis and Ishtar are the principals in a dream reported by Hattusilis III (1275-1250 B.C.), also a brother of Muwatallis. It tells that Muwatallis, apparently with some evil motive, ordered that his brother Hattusilis be subjected to a trial "by the sacred wheel" (a procedure or torture whose nature is uncertain).

"However," the intended victim’s report states, "my Lady Ishtar appeared to me in a dream; in the dream she said to me as follows: ‘Shall I abandon you to a hostile deity? Be not afraid!’ And with the help of the Goddess I was acquitted; because the Goddess, my Lady, held me by the hand; she never abandoned me to a hostile deity or an evil judgment."

According to the various Hittite royal annals from that time, the Goddess Ishtar announced her support of Hattusilis III in his struggle for the throne with his brother Mutawallis in several oracle dreams. In one report the claim was made that the Goddess promised the Hittite throne to Hattusilis in a dream by his wife - a wife, according to another dream-record, espoused by him "upon the command of the Goddess Ishtar; the Goddess entrusted her to me in a dream."

In a third dream report, Ishtar is said to have appeared to Urhi-Teshub, the heir appointed by Mutawallis to succeed him, and told him in a dream that all his efforts to thwart Hattusilis were in vain:

"Aimlessly you have tired yourselves out, for I, Ishtar, all the lands of the Hittites to Hattusilis have turned over."

Hittite dream reports, at least to the extent that they have been found, reflect the importance that was attached there to the proper observance of the rites and requirements of worship. In one discovered text "a dream of his majesty the king" is reported thus: In the dream, the Lady Hebat Who Judges (the spouse of Teshub) said again and again to his majesty, ‘When the Storm God comes from heaven, he should not find you to be stingy.’

While dreaming, the king responded that he had made a golden ritual object for the God. But the Goddess said, "It is not enough!" Then another king, the king of Hakmish, entered the dream-conversation, saying to his majesty:

"Why have you not given the Huhupal-‘mstm-ments and the lapis-lazuli stones which you have promised to Teshub?"

When the Hittite king awoke from this trialogued dream, he reported it to the priestess Hebatsum. And she said the dream meant that "You must give the Huhupal-instruments and the lapis-Iazuli stones to the great God."

Uncharacteristically for the record of royal dream reports in the ancient Near East, some of the Hittite ones pertain to dreams by queens, female members of the royalty. One such record, that begins with the introductory statement "A dream of the queen," states that "the queen has made a vow in a dream to the Goddess Hebat." In that dream-vow, the queen said to the Goddess: "If you, my Lady, Divine Hebat, will make the king well and not give him over to the Evil, I shall make for Divine Hebat a golden statue and a rosette of gold, and for your breast I shall also make a golden pectoral."

In yet another instance, the recorded event was the appearance of an unidentified God to the queen in a dream - perhaps the same queen who sought Hebat’s intervention to cure her sick royal spouse. In the dream this God told the queen "regarding the matter which weighs heavily on your heart concerning your husband: He will live; I shall give him 100 years." Hearing that,

"the queen made a vow in her dream as follows: ‘If you do thus for me and my husband remains alive, I shall give to the Gods three Harshialli-conlmners, one with oil, one with honey and one with fruits.'"

The king’s illness must have indeed weighed heavily on this queen’s heart, for in a third dream record the queen reported that someone whom she could not see said again and again to her in the dream: "Make a vow to the Goddess Ningal" (the spouse of Nannar/Sin), promising the Goddess ritual objects of gold decorated with lapis lazuli if the king recovers. Here the sickness is described as "fire of the feet."

In another part of Asia Minor, in Lydia where Greek cities prospered, a king named Gyges had - according to his adversary the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal - a dream-vision. In it the sleeping king was shown an inscription that spelled out the name of Ashurbanipal. The divine message said:

"Bow before the feet of Ashurbanipal, the King of Assyria; then you will conquer your enemies just by mentioning this name."

According to the Assyrian king’s inscription in his annals, King Gyges,

"the very same day that he had this dream, sent a horseman to wish me well and report the dream to me; and from the day he bowed before my royal feet, he conquered the Cimmerians who had been harassing the inhabitants of his country."

The Assyrian king’s interest in, and recording of, the dream of a foreign king was but a reflection of the extent of Assyrian beliefs in the power of dreams as a form of Divine Encounter. The epiphanies and oracles conveyed by royal dreams were a phenomenon eagerly sought after, and reported, by the kings of Assyria; the same held true for the kings of their neighbor and rival Babylonia.

Ashurbanipal himself (686-626 B.C), who kept extensive annals on baked clay prisms (as this one now in the Louvre Museum - Fig. 81), recorded several dream experiences; often they were by others rather than himself, just as was the case with King Gyges.

Figure 81
 

In one instance it was a record of a priest who went to sleep and in the middle of the night

"had a dream as follows: There was writing upon the pedestal of the God Sin; the God Nabu, scribe of the world, was reading the inscription again and again: ‘Upon those who plot evil against Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, and resort to hostilities, I shall bring miserable death, I shall put an end to their lives with a quick iron dagger, conflagration, hunger and disease.’"

A postscript by Ashurbanipal to this report of a dream stated: "This dream I heard and put my trust in the word of my Lord Sin."

In another instance it was asserted that one and the same dream - vision might be a better term - was experienced by a whole army. In the relevant record Ashurbanipal explains that when his army reached the river Idide it was a raging torrent and the soldiers were afraid to try a crossing. "But the Goddess Ishtar who dwells in Arbela let my army have a dream in the middle of the night."

In this mass dream or vision Ishtar was heard to say, "I shall go in front of Ashurbanipal, the king whom I have myself made." The army, Ashurbanipal added as a postscript, "relied upon this dream and crossed the river Idide safely." (Historical data confirm a crossing of this river by Ashurbanipal’s army circa 648 B.C.)

In the introduction to another dream concerning his reign Ashurbanipal claimed that the dream, by a priest of the Goddess Ishtar, resulted from a prior auditory communication from the Goddess directly to the king himself.

"The Goddess Ishtar heard my anxious sighs and said to me, ‘Fear not ... inasmuch as you have lifted your hands in prayer and your eyes are filled with tears, I have mercy upon you.’ "

It was during that very same night of the above epiphany that "a seer-priest went to bed and saw a dream; when he awoke with a start, Ishtar made him see a night-vision." As reported by the priest to Ashurbanipal, what he saw in the nocturnal vision was this:

"The Goddess Ishtar who dwells in Arbela came in; quivers were hanging at her right and her left; she held the bow in her hand; her sharp sword was drawn for battle. You were standing before her and she spoke to you like a real mother."

Then, the priest reported, he heard in the night-vision Ishtar say to the king:

"Wait with the attack; wherever you go, I shall go ahead of you ... Stay here, eat, drink wine and make merry and praise my divinity, while I shall go ahead and accomplish the task that you have asked for."

Then, the priest continued to describe the vision: The Goddess embraced the king and wrapped him in her protective aura; "her countenance shone like fire, and she left the room." The vision, the seer-priest told the king, meant that Ishtar will be at his side when he marches against his enemy. The vision of Ishtar armed and as a warlike Goddess emitting rays has been recorded in various ancient depictions (Fig. 82). ‘

Figure 82
 

The annals of Ashurbanipal, who claimed that among his great knowledge was the ability to interpret dreams, are replete with references to oracles - probably through dreams, though this is not specified - given him by this or that of the "great Gods, my lords" in connection with his military campaigns. His interest in dreams and their interpretation led him also to have state archives examined for records of past oracle dreams.

Thus we learn that an archivist by the name of Marduk-shum-usur reported to Ashurbanipal that his grandfather Sennacherib had a dream in which the God Ashur (Fig. 83), Assyria’s national God, appeared to him and said, "O wise one, king, king of kings: You are the offspring of wise Adapa; you surpass all men in the knowledge of Apsu (Enki’s domain)."

Figure 83
 

In the same report the archivist, evidently trained as an omen-priest, also reported to Ashurbanipal the circumstances that made his father, Esarhaddon, invade Egypt. It was when "thy father Esarhaddon was in the region of Harran that he saw there a temple of cedarwood, and he went in, and saw inside the God Sin leaning on a staff, holding two crowns." The God Nusku, the Divine Messenger of the Gods,

"was standing there before him; when the father of the king entered, the God placed a crown upon his head, saying, ‘You will go to countries, therein you will conquer.’ Your father departed and conquered Egypt."

Though the text does not say so explicitly, it is presumed that the incident at the temple in Harran was also a dream, a vision-dream seen by Esarhaddon. Indeed, both historical and religious texts from that time indicate that Nannar/Sin had left Mesopotamia after Sumer had been desolated and Marduk returned to Babylon to claim supremacy "on Earth and in Heaven" (in 2024 B.C. by our calculations).

Harran, where Esarhaddon received the permissive oracle from the absent God, had been a twin cult center of Nannar/Sin, emulating that of Nannar/Sin’s principal center in Sumer - the city of Ur. It was to Harran that Abraham’s father, the priest Terah, took his family when they left Ur. And, as we shall see, Harran came again into prominence when dream-omens and real events once again changed the course of history.

As prophesied by the biblical Prophets, mighty Assyria, the scourge of nations, lay prostrate before Achaemenid (Persian) invaders, who overran Nineveh in 612 B.C. In Babylon Nebuchadnezzar, freed of Assyrian constraints, rushed into the void, capturing lands near and far, destroying the Temple in Jerusalem. But the days of Babylon were also numbered, and the end was foretold to the haughty king in a series of dreams. As recorded in the Bible (Daniel chapter 2) Nebuchadnezzar had a troubling dream.

He called in "the magicians, seers, sorcerers and Chaldeans" (i.e. astrologers) and asked them to interpret the dream - however, without telling them what the dream was. Unable to do so, he ordered their execution. But then Daniel was brought before the king, and invoked the powers of the "God in heaven who reveals mysteries." As the executioner of the others was told to halt, Daniel first guessed the dream and then solved its meaning.

"In your vision," he told the king, "you saw a very large statue, exceedingly bright, terrifying in appearance, standing before thee."

The statue’s head was made of gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron, the feet part iron and part clay. Then a stone that no hand held appeared and smote the statue to pieces; the pieces turned to chaff that was carried by a wind into oblivion; and the stone turned into a great mountain.

"This is the dream," Daniel said, and here is its meaning: The statue represents the great Babylon; the golden head is Nebuchadnezzar; after him there shall be three lesser kings; and in the end it will all be swept away like chaff, and a new king from elsewhere shall rise to greatness.

Nebuchadnezzar then had a second dream. He called in the seers, including Daniel. In "visions as he lay in bed," the king said, he saw a tall tree that kept growing until it reached the heavens; it was a fruitful and shade-giving tree. Suddenly,

In the vision, at the head of my bed,
a Watcher, a Holy One, came down from heaven.
He cried out aloud, saying:
"Cut down the tree and lop off its branches,
strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit,
let the beasts flee its shade and the birds its branches;
but leave in the ground its stump and roots."

And Daniel told the king that the tree was he, Nebuchadnezzar; and the vision was an oracle of things to come - the end of Nebuchadnezzar, doomed to lose his mind and roam the fields like windblown leaves and eat like the beasts. Tradition holds that Nebuchadnezzar indeed went mad, dying seven years after that oracle dream (in 562 B.C.).

As predicted, his three successors were short-lived kings, demised and killed in a series of rebellions. Into the breach stepped the High Priestess of the temple of Sin in Harran; and in a series of appeals and prayers to Sin, she prevailed on this God to return to Harran and bless the assumption of kingship by her son Nabuna’id (although he was only remotely related to the Assyrian royal line). It was as a result that the last effective king of Babylon and his dreams linked the end of Mesopotamian civilizations to Harran. The time was 555 B.C.

In order for a non-Babylonian and a follower of Sin to rule in Babylon, the approval of Marduk, and a rapprochement between this son of Enki and the son (Sin) of Enlil were required. The double blessing and the rapprochement were confirmed - perhaps achieved - by means of several dreams by Nabuna’id. They were so important that he recorded them on stelas, for all to know.

The omen-dreams of Nabuna’id had some unusual features. In at least two of them planets representing deities made an appearance. In another, the apparition of a dead king took part in the goings-on, and it was divided into two parts as a way to relate a dream within a dream.

In the first of those recorded dreams, Nabuna’id saw "the planet Venus, the planet Saturn, the planet Ab-Hal, the Shining Planet, and the Great Star, the great witnesses who dwell in heaven." He (in the dream) set up altars to them and prayed for lasting life, enduring rule, and a favorable response to his prayers by Marduk. He then - in the same dream or in a sequel thereto - "lay down and beheld in a nightly vision the Great Goddess who restores health and bestows life on the dead." He prayed to her, too, for lasting life "and asked that she might turn her face toward me"; and

She actually did turn, and looked steadily upon me with her shining face, thus indicating her mercy.

In the preamble to the report of another dream Nabuna’id states that he "became apprehensive in regard to the conjunction of the Great Star and the Moon," the celestial counterparts of Marduk and Nannar/Sin. Then he went on to tell the dream:

In the dream, a man’s apparition suddenly stood beside me.
He said to me: "There are no evil portents in the conjunction."

In the same dream Nubuchadnezzar, my royal predecessor, appeared to me. He was standing on a chariot with one attendant. The attendant said to Nebuchadnezzar:

 

"Do speak to Nabunaid so that he would report to you the dream he just had!"
Nebuchadnezzar listened to him and said to me: "Tell me what good omens you have seen."
 

I answered him, saying, "In my dream I saw with joy the Great Star and the Moon. And the planet of Marduk, high up in the sky, called me by my name."

The conjunction of the celestial counterparts of Marduk and Sin signified, thus, the agreement of both to the ascent of Nabuna’id to the throne; the inquiring departed Nebuchadnezzar and the satisfactory answer given him signified that he, too, in a kind of retrospect, approved this succession.

The third dream carried the rapprochement between Marduk and Sin even farther. In it "the great Gods" Marduk and Sin were seen standing together, and Marduk reprimanded the king for not yet beginning the rebuilding of Sin’s temple in Harran. In the two-way conversation, Nabuna’id explained that he could not do that because the Medians were laying siege to the city. Whereupon Marduk predicted the enemy’s demise by the hand of Cyrus, the Achaemenid king. This indeed has later taken place, Nabuna’id wrote in a postscript to the record of this dream.

Struggling to hold together the disintegrating empire, Nabuna’id appointed his son Belshazzar as regent in Babylon. But there, amid the banqueting intended to forget the surrounding turmoil, there appeared the Handwriting-on-the-Wall.

Mene, me tie, lekel u Pharsin it said - the days of BabyIon are numbered, the kingdom shall be divided and given over to the Medians and Persians.

In 539 B.C. the city fell to the Achaemenid (Persian) king Cyrus. One of his first acts was to permit the return of exiles to their lands and their freedom to worship in their temples of choice - an edict recorded on the Cylinder of Cyrus (Fig. 84), now in the British Museum in London.

Figure 84
 

To the Jewish exiles he issued a special proclamation permitting their return to Judaea and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem; he was doing so, the Bible states, because he was "charged to do so" by "Yahweh, the God of Heaven."
 

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