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Tereza Coraggio's avatar

What an epic post, Nef! I wanted to read this when I could really focus and read it slowly. Congratulations on the podcast and upping the ante on the technology ;-) That will also help me in the pronunciation of words like 'Set.' And I appreciate the references to my work. It will be useful to have this to quote and link. There's so much that I learned from reading this.

As Tirion says, we're all just trying to figure this out. So I'll throw some thoughts out here that may or may not be right. No attachment to them:

* My gut feeling is that Ba'al was nothing like Set but was projected backwards onto a peaceful agricultural deity. The representations we have of Ba'al worship come from the Bible, where Ba'al is the enemy of Yahweh/ Seth. I don't trust that.

* I'm still figuring out if Amurru existed as a city or if it was more of a territory that Abdi-Ashirta was taking over, city by city. Even within the Amarna Letters it seems contradictory evidence is presented for each.

* The Wiki on Hyksos said that it was a contraction of Heka Khasut, rather than the people and the rulers. Not sure if that's accurate.

* "In the time of Rim-Sin I (1822 BCE to 1763 BCE), the Sumerians knew a group of Aramaean nomads living in southern Mesopotamia as SA. GAZ" It's so interesting that the sagazu that became the Habiru were Arameaen. That goes back to Laban the Arameaen whose fault it was that the Habiru went to Egypt. I wonder if they were evicted because of a failed coup by a younger son of the ruler. So they took their tricks of the coup trade to Egypt.

* I'm not certain if the Hyksos / Heka Khasut and the Habiru were the same people. It seems like the Hyksos were the first to infiltrate and become the foreign rulers over Egypt, maybe the ruling elite if the whole group became the 240,000 people evicted from Avaris. I do take your point that the rulers and people are not the same. It seems like this was before the era of Abdi-Ashirta, who only organized the Hapiru and may not have been one of them. The Habiru seemed only to be in the vassal states of Egypt, not Egypt itself. Did the evicted Hyksos become Habiru? Did the 19th c Habiru/ sagasu from Aram become the Hyksos?

* The rabbi who commented on one of my episodes said that the root of Cain and Canaan were not the same in Hebrew, they only looked the same in English. So that dashed my theory. But I've realized since they were opposite peoples. The Canaanites are the settled people the Habiru are trying to make into slaves in their mythology. Cain is the first version of Set--he kills his brother and is evicted from Eden, his lineage and Seth's are the same, and he's protected from anyone harming him by edict, just like the Kha-sut. I think his name is related perhaps to the Kennites or Tubal-Cain who were metal workers, aka goldsmiths and coiners of the realm.

* Finally, I've been thinking about animals. I'm guessing that, from time immemorial, families had a cow, the community had a bull or two, but male heifers were killed young because they're more trouble than it's worth to raise for meat. So Ba'al represented as a cow would be domesticated. So would pigs, that would be kept in a yard and fed scraps. What needs plenty of pasture are sheep. And if you're a farming community, a herd of sheep could wipe out your fields of grain or planted crops in no time. So sheep are a weapon of infiltration and aggression. I wonder if the shepherd's crook came into use as a sign of royalty with the Hyksos, and if that's why Genesis says that Egyptians fear shepherds.

Thank you again, Nef, for such a thorough article. Much more here than I've commented on!

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all-rights-reserved's avatar

Thanks for providing sound file with you reading for us this long interestimg essay..

It takes an effort to write as research witch you humbly mention..

Recording an mp3 of it is creme de la creme and worth noting..

As it helped me to paralell task working here on the farm many an interesting angles can be commented on.. Later tonight Swedish time I will have a go on a few comments like:

(Fast and dirty syllabe-script hints relativ "sound bites")

Ha be ru*

Ha≈"Have"

be="be/beingness/trait-of-actions-"

ru≈secrets/"wisdom"/inward-sight-or-search"

I gather it could be "those havibg/keeping to secrets/secret+deveptive-in-trade(" wisdom"/malice)

*(from a Norse historic syllable-glyph trail analysis:)

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