Unveiling the Messiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls

By Margaret S. King

The author is convinced that the early Byzantine Church deliberately cut out sections from an historic text to conceal the truth about the crucifixion of a man they were promoting as their Messiah. She solves the mystery by reconstructing the deleted sections. King pieces together what happened in Jerusalem during the trial and attempted crucifixion of the real Messiah and shows that the key passages that were tampered with are actually the missing link that connects the Dead Sea Scrolls to the New Testament Gospels. Using those passags and the history of the period, she identifies the figures mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465392206

Margaret S. King

The writer, Margaret S. King, is an anthropologist who has studied Middle Eastern societies, both ancient and modern. Certain that the early Byzantine Church deliberately cut out sections from an historic text to cover up the truth about the crucifixion of a man they were promoting as their Messiah, she was determined to solve the mystery by reconstructing the sections that were deleted. Using a wealth of evidence, the writer was able to together what happened in Jerusalem during the trial and attempted crucifixion of the real Messiah. She shows that the key passage that was tampered with is actually the missing link that connects the Dead Sea Scrolls to, the New Testament Gospels. Using the reconstructed passage and the history of the period, she was able to figure out who were the cast of characters that were given symbolic names in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Filling in the missing pieces, the writer clarifies what happened in history. In the process, the real Messiah is unveiled and an explanation is given for the events that led to the development of Christianity.

Book preview

UNVEILING THE MESSIAH IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

MARGARET S. KING

Copyright © 2012 by Margaret S. King.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011960132

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4653-9219-0

                  Softcover        978-1-4653-9218-3

                  eBook              978-1-4653-9220-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/29/2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Greeks in the Near East

I. Introduction

Chapter 2 Dispelling the Myths and Errors in the New Testament Narratives

I. Introduction

II. The Dead Sea Scrolls

III. The Essenes

IV. The Community Rule

V. The Damascus Document

Chapter 3 Searching for the Community That Wrote the Scrolls

I. The Lifestyle of the Pythagoreans

II. Were the Essenes the Authors of the Scrolls?

Chapter 4 The Dead Sea Scrolls Analyzed

I. Similarities between the Community Rule, Damascus Document, and Biblical Jesus

II. The Teacher of Righteousness

III. The Kittim

IV. Historical References in the Scrolls

V. Reliance on Prophetic Narratives

VI. Other Similarities between Biblical Jesus and the Scrolls

Chapter 5 Analysis of the Gospels

I. Historical Inconsistencies in the Gospels’ Stories of Jesus

II. The Galileans

III. Various Apocalyptic Scrolls

IV. Other Herodian Period Scrolls

V. References to Gods and Sons of God in the Scrolls and the Bible

VI. Son of Man

VII. Terminology of Light and Darkness

VIII. More Terminology in the Gospels that Reflects the Language of the Scrolls

Chapter 6 Who Wrote the Scrolls?

I. Were the Scroll Writers the Sadducees?

II. Hillel, Shammai, and the Bene Bathyra

III. The Scrolls Reflect the Persian and Mesopotamian Milieu

IV. The Pharisees and their Persian Background

V. The Herodian Period

VI. Forty Years

Chapter 7 Legends of the Jews

I. Introduction

II. The Legends of Elijah (Aramaic Elias)

III. The Prophets Elijah and Isaiah

IV. The Legends of the Ephraimitic Messiah

V. The Samaritans

Chapter 8 The Stories Of John The Baptist And Jesus

I. The Gospels’ Story Of John The Baptist

II. Archelaus And Glaphyra

III. The Passages In Flavius Josephus Regarding Jesus And John The Baptist

Chapter 9 Uncovering the Plot to Deceive

I. Introduction

II. Laying Out the Puzzle Pieces

III. The Messiah ‘Isa

IV. The Gospels’ Version of the Births of Jesus and John

V. The Quran’s Story of the Messiah ‘Isa and the Prophet Yahya

Chapter 10 The Community That Wrote the Damascus Document

I. Introduction

Chapter 11 The Messiah ‘Isa and the Teacher of Righteousness

I. Introduction

II. The Trial of the Teacher of Righteousness

III. Assembling the Missing Pieces

Chapter 12 The Verdict and Crucifixion

I. Antonia

II. The Escape

III. The Pauline Christians

IV. The Claims Regarding the Divinity of the Messiah

V. The Samaritans as Promoters of Pauline Christianity

VI. The Persian Connection and the Messiah ‘Isa

Chapter 13 The Followers of the Messiah ‘Isa

I. The Nasara

II. The Prophet Muhammad

III. The New Jerusalem in the Scrolls (1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q554–555, 5Q15, 11Q18)

IV. The Revelation of Saint John the Divine

V. The Scepter and the Kingdom of God on Earth

VI. The War Scroll Fulfilled

Chapter 14 The Prophet Muhammad and the Jews

I. Introduction

II. The Rulers of the Faithful

III. The Islamic Liberation of Jerusalem

IV. The Misinterpretation of Biblical and Nonbiblical Literature by Christianity

V. The Book of Esther

Chapter 15 Prophetic Literature

I. Are We Witnessing Prophecy Being Fulfilled?

II. The Dajjal and Other Prophecies

III. The Beast

IV. Divine Judgement Against Pharaoh

V. Evidence of the End of the World

VI. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

ILLUSTRATIONS

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Figure1: Map by Sr. Robert De Vaugondy Fils, Geographe Ordinaire du Roi, titled: Etats Du Grand-Seigneur En Asie, Empire De Perse, Pays Des Usbecs, Arabie et Egypte,1753

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Figure2: Enlarged section of map shown in Figure1.

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Figure3: Map published by Henry Teesdale and Co., London.

Drawn and engraved By J. Dower PentonviIIe, London, 1843.

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Figure4: Enlarged section of map shown in Figure3.

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Figure5: Map titled Tabula Asiae IIII (Near East) by Ruscelli, 1562

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Figure6: Enlarged section of map shown in Figure5.

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Figure7: Map of the western coastline of the Arabian Peninsula by Royal Geographer, Dom Philippo de Tunis, 1657. Titled: Itineraire du Caire a la Mecque. Selon la Relation de Dom Philippo de Tunis qui en a fait la voyage lian 1657. Par P. Du Val, Geographe du Roy.

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INTRODUCTION

As an anthropologist and social scientist, I was always fascinated by the legends of the people of the Middle East. Regardless of the religious or ethnic affiliation, legends tell us a great deal about a people, and sometimes if one digs hard enough through the myths, one can find a kernel of truth embedded within them. Similar legends often appear in different societies. Connecting the dots between them permits the researcher to trace the paths that link them.

Ten years ago, I was doing some research at a local library. Surprised by the new collection of books on religion, I was attracted to the newly acquired seven-volume series written by Louis Ginzberg, titled The Legends of the Jews.¹ Over a long time, I was engrossed by those legends, studying their beliefs and the culture they practiced. I soon developed a strong sense of who the ancient Near Eastern people were. Anthropologists often live among the people they study, recording every detail about their societies and cultures. In a reverse fashion, by immersing myself in the literature of people who ceased to exist, I felt that I was bringing the ancient Near Eastern people back to life. In many ways, they were not very different from all the people who inhabit the Middle East today.

Curious, I began reading the twenty-volume books of the Palestinian Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, namely, Jewish Antiquities, and the seven-volume The Jewish War, as well as his other writings, like The Life against Apion.² I could imagine myself in the streets of Greater Syria and Palestine two thousand years ago, as turmoil and civil wars erupted following Greek and Roman occupations, not very different from what we see today throughout the Middle East.

When I arrived at one passage in Jewish Antiquities, a particular sentence caught my attention, and it was obvious to me and other scholars who had examined this passage that parts of the text were missing. This was very unusual for Flavius Josephus. The sentence that intrigued me involved a specific legend of the Jews, and any scholar familiar with the legend should have immediately recognized that there was someone in the Temple, who was believed to be a Messiah, during a period of turmoil in Jerusalem. Realizing that this Messiah was in the Temple decades earlier than the biblical version of the story, I could not comprehend why no one had noticed the significance of the passage. I read the writings of modern historians who focused on ancient Jewish history and found that they recounted that section verbatim, without a second thought.

How could it be that the answers to the mysteries of Jesus lay hidden in plain sight for two millennia and no one had noticed them? Once I studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, I realized that many of the scrolls, and the particular passage in Jewish Antiquities that intrigued me, matched the same time period, namely, the Herodian era. Had I inadvertently stumbled on a conspiracy to hide the truth? Could it be that a passage in the writings of Flavius Josephus, describing the true story of the Messiah and his trial in Jerusalem, was cut out deliberately in an attempt to conceal the truth? I knew that this cut-and-snip job could not have been the work of the Jews, since two thousand years ago, they were well aware of their own legends. If they had been trying to conceal evidence, the sentence that drew my attention would have also been deleted.

Eventually, I concluded that this was the work of the Greek Christians, many of whom never really comprehended the legends of the Jews. The original writings of Flavius Josephus in Hebrew and Aramaic somehow disappeared and were replaced by the Greek versions. Was this the work of the Greek priests who assembled at the Council of Nicaea during the fourth century CE, or was it the efforts of others prior to this period? Were they responsible for adding two passages to Jewish Antiquities that were clearly not part of the original writings of Flavius Josephus? What were they trying to hide? Was this a conspiracy to deceive the world about who the real Messiah was?

My curiosity aroused, I was determined to solve the mystery of the Messiah who was in the Temple that day. I began to read everything that was written by the religious communities during the time period, whether it was the writings of the rabbinic sages, the Samaritans, the members of the early cult of Christianity; the works of ancient historians; the Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 in Egypt; or the Dead Sea Scrolls, the first of which were discovered in 1947 in Palestine. Examining the combined literature enabled me to connect the dots of ancient Near Eastern history and to draw an image of who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. The image contradicts the theories of most scholars, who tend to thrust their theories on the texts rather than permit the texts to speak for themselves. Examining the literature also enabled me to piece together the missing sections of the deleted text.

In order to truly comprehend the Dead Sea Scrolls, one has to realize the environment from which they emerged. One has to comprehend the legends of the Jews. One has to have a better image of ancient Near Eastern history and how it is connected to the rise of Islam five centuries after the fall of the Temple. Islam did not appear out of a vacuum, and to comprehend it, one has to understand the real religious history of the Near East, what prophets preached, what the people were expecting, who the Messiah was, and what the controversy was about him.

In order to get a better image of ancient Near Eastern history, I urge the reader to read my first book, The Exodus in the Quran, which was published in 2007.³ This book and the one published in 2007 were completed in December 2004. My intent was to give a logical analysis of ancient Near Eastern history prior to the rise of Christianity. Putting together the puzzle pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls is impossible without first seeing the picture on the box. Scholars have been unable to figure out who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls because they never had the picture on the box. They have failed to understand the symbolic references to some of the key players mentioned in the scrolls, and they have not fully understood how the scrolls connect to the rise of early Christianity.

The mistake scholars have made when trying to figure out who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they focused primarily on events taking place in Palestine. They never looked at the big picture of Near Eastern history. Focusing on Palestine or Judaea, or the Dead Sea area, is restrictive and leads to tunnel vision. One has to follow the enormous amount of evidence that has been unearthed by archaeology. The scholarly studies of ancient Near Eastern languages, and the evolution of biblical Hebrew words from those found in ancient languages that preceded Hebrew, give us a trail to follow when connecting the dots.

Near Eastern religious communities traveled; made pilgrimages to holy cities; shared ideas, legends, cultural practices; intermarried; and were all related in some manner to societies and tribes that existed for several millennia prior to the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Over a period of thousands of years, tribes waged war against one another and often took captives, who were most often women and children. Those women and children brought with them their own languages, skills, and cultural and religious traditions. The women often married their captors and influenced the knowledge and traditions that were passed on to future generations.⁴ Warfare, drought, plagues often caused communities to relocate to various parts of the Near East. Sometimes relocation was a result of opportunity and other times the motive was to seek refuge or safety from one’s enemies.

Before analyzing the scrolls, it is important to understand biblical history as it relates to archaeological discoveries. In my book on the Exodus, I confirm that the story of the Exodus into Palestine from today’s Egypt was indeed a myth, and there was no Joshua invading the alleged promised land from Jericho. Archaeologists have reduced the story to a legend, since all the evidence that has emerged from the Near East proves that the conquest as described in the Bible was impossible.⁵

Having analyzed rabbinic literature, as well as the Quran, I came to the conclusion that the story of Joshua was based on the story of Sargon I (Sharrum-kin), who created the first Near Eastern empire that we know of (ca. 2334 BCE). The mythical Joshua, as depicted in Jewish legends, did not only conquer Palestine, but his conquests extended to areas throughout the Fertile Crescent. A close examination of rabbinic literature and the book of Joshua led me to conclude that he conquered all the territories subjugated by Sargon I. He was battling the Elamites in Persia, and the Armenians and Georgians as far as the Taurus and Caucasus Mountains.⁶ The scribes, who were compiling the legends found in rabbinic literature, were definitely adding more information to the biblical version of the story of the exodus from Egypt.

As I argue, using a wealth of evidence to back my theories, the real Israelites, or beni Isra’il (tribes of Israel), lived in the Akkadian- and Sumerian-speaking worlds. They established the two kingdoms of Akkad and Sumer that parallel the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah coined by the scribes who composed the biblical texts in Judaea around 1,600 years later. Akkad, like Israel, held the majority of Israelite tribes; and Sumer, like Judah, was where the minority lived. By the time the biblical writers composed their history during the early to mid-first millennium BCE, the historic names of kingdoms and important religious figures during the early years of their history were no longer known to them. The legends and stories were passed down from one generation to another in oral traditions. Over time, those traditions became blurred and were corrected, perhaps, by prophets who appeared to them during various historic periods. The recollection of historic events that the scribes in Jerusalem recorded in their Torah became more accurate as they recalled the events in their immediate past.

Abraham (Ibrahim in the Quran), who fathered Isma’il and Isaac, spoke Sumerian and Akkadian. Ibrahim was a Semitic Akkadian name that was a combination of two Akkadian words, ibri (friend) and rahu(m) (God or the Creator), similar to the Arabic word Rahim, meaning the Merciful. The Assyrians named him ebru or abaru (friend). Eventually, the biblical scribes named him Abram (friend) and, after his covenant with God, wrote his name as Abraham, the friend of God. True to the Akkadian original, Ibrahim was a friend of God.

Tracing the roots of the language, one can see the evolution of words from their original versions. The Assyrians, no doubt, influenced the writing of the biblical texts. Arabs continue to refer to a Hebrew as an ibri, using the original version found in Akkadian. They refer to the Jews as Yahud, a word derived from Ia-u-di, that can be found in many Assyrian inscriptions, referring to the inhabitants of Judaea.⁷ The Arabic language clearly distinguishes between the ancient Hebrews and the Jews.

The Prophet Jacob was renamed Israel after wrestling with a phantom or angel of God in the shape of a man, holding him in a firm grip (Gen. 32:24–28). The name Israel can be traced to an Akkadian origin. In the Quran, his name is Isra’il. In Akkadian, eseru means to confine or enclose an enemy. The Akkadian word e’elu (e’’elu, e’ilu, i’lu) means to bind or tie all around as one does when one wrestles a person or demon. Combine eseru and e’elu, and we have esere’il, which can be equated with Isra’il."⁸

The name of the first man, Adam, was also an Akkadian name. The Hebrew word for human is ‘adam. In Old Akkadian, the word adam had several meanings, one of which is a very important person. According to Flavius Josephus, Adam was given his name because it means that he was "made from the red earth kneaded together which was the color of the true virgin soil." Josephus claimed the definition was from the Hebrew language, which modern scholars rejected.⁹ Josephus, however, was a student of the Pharisees, who arrived from Mesopotamia, and it is evident that the rabbis had accurate information. In Akkadian, the words adamatu and adammu means red blood or a dark-colored bodily discharge. Adamatu and adammu also mean dark red earth used as a dye.¹⁰ Josephus was evidently correct in his analysis. The Hebrew definition was derived from its Akkadian original.

The word for clay, however, in Jewish Aramaic and biblical Hebrew was derived from the Akkadian tit, meaning wet clay. The Quran (Surahs 15:26, 28, 33) states that man was created from sounding clay. However, in Surahs 38:71, 76; 17:61, the word is different. The word used is tyn, (pronounced teen). The Arabic word is similar to the Aramaic, Syriac, and West Semitic Akkadian, but not the Akkadian. The West Semitic Akkadian tyn, however, was more widespread and believed to be the oldest version of the word that was perhaps corrupted by the Akkadians.¹¹ Interestingly, the Quran takes us to the original word for clay or tyn.

The Quran states that it was God "who taught (the use of) the pen, taught man that which he knew not" (Surahs 96:4–5). The Akkadians had a very long history in Mesopotamia. Some scholars have speculated that the Akkadians had the knowledge of writing skills as far back as the Uruk V period (3400–3200 BCE). Jean-Jacques Glassner offers a hypothesis that ties together the development of writing with the desire to connect with the divine world:

Could divination, the wish to decipher the omens and to unravel the graphic codes belonging to the divine world, have been the driving force behind the invention? One of the two Sumerian words that indicate ‘to write’ is hur, whose Akkadian correspondent eseru refers specifically to the divinatory omens written down by the gods. We know, moreover, that the sun god uses all his ingenuity to write sataru messages.¹²

How interesting that the correspondent in the above passage is named eseru, which could be an abbreviated form of the name Isra’il. Perhaps the Prophet Jacob lived during the fourth millennium BCE, which would place the Prophet Abraham’s life in a far earlier era than biblical chronology describes it. Glassner further writes:

When Gudea of Lagash wanted to build a new temple for his god Ningirsu, the gods offered favorable omens. The goddess Nisaba wrote down on a tablet, using a stylus, the stellar constellations that prefigured the proposed ‘plan,’ gis.hur, at which point the divine scribe, the god Nindub, ‘lord of the tablet,’ had to intervene and transcribe the celestial signs into cuneiform signs.¹³

Knowing that the skill of writing began simultaneously among the Sumerians and Egyptians should cause scholars to realize that both people were living side by side at some point in history.

The stories from Creation and Noah’s Flood onward can be found throughout Sumerian legends. The names of the characters changed, depending on who was telling the story, but the epic was similar to that found in the Bible. Old Testament stories were not part of ancient Egyptian history. The Hebrew word for Eden is derived from the Akkadian word Edinu, which meant fertile plain. Genesis describes it as a well-watered and forested land irrigated by four rivers. The land is described as the place where God "placed all the vegetation that produces seed that is on the face of the earth for you and every tree, which has in it the fruit of a tree producing seed" (Gen. 1:29). It is a perfect description of the Mesopotamian and Persian landscape, where civilization began.

Some scholars have noted the similarity between the Sumerian text titled, The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, and the book of Job. Sumerian and Akkadian literature, like the one titled Babylonian Ecclesiastes or A Pessimistic Dialogue between Master and Servant, bears similarity to certain Old Testament texts.¹⁴ The natural assumption has always been that the Old Testament authors copied ancient stories that were passed down orally over the millennia. It is unlikely, however, that these are simply examples of cultural borrowing.

The story of Joseph (Yusef) matches the Mesopotamian environment. Many of the descriptions of the life of Joseph within the Bible, rabbinic literature, and the Quran take us to northern Mesopotamia. Words used in the Quran (Surahs 12:12, 22–23) during the conversation between the ladies who were invited to view Yusef’s maturity and beauty hold some hints about the location of the story, and that location was most likely northern Mesopotamia, specifically Hurrian territory in Syria.¹⁵ The Hurrians and the Akkadians probably lived together for a long time, perhaps from the fourth or third millennium BCE onward.¹⁶

According to the Bible, Joseph’s title in Egypt (Gen. 41:43) was abrek, which has no connection to the Egyptian language. The root of the title is evidently from the Akkadian abriqqu (purification priest) or abarakku (temple official, steward).¹⁷ Having an Old Akkadian or Old Babylonian title for Joseph has baffled scholars, who could not see how an Egyptian title would be derived from Akkadian.¹⁸ Contradicting rabbinic literature, the Quran gives the impression that during the period of Joseph, there were no pharaohs in the land that Joseph was brought to as a slave, just kings with a sense of morality. It was after the lifetime of Joseph that a civilization of pharaohs rose to power and persecuted the Israelite descendants of Joseph’s father Jacob. The Bible states that there was "a new king" who ruled over Egypt after the period of Joseph (Exod. 1:8).

The descriptions of the lifestyle of Pharaoh and his civilization match perfectly with what has been unearthed in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, depicting lavish Egyptian-like burials in the era prior to the conquests of Sargon I. Such burials were not typical of the cultures of Mesopotamia or anywhere in the Fertile Crescent before or after the possible three centuries in which the mysterious civilization in Ur existed. The wealth, culture, and advanced architecture exhibited by the Pharaoh-like people interred in the Royal Cemetery of Ur contrasted greatly with the simple life of the Akkadians who replaced them in Ur. Even the chariots exhibited in the artwork found in the cemetery bring to mind the Pharaoh of the Exodus story as he chased the Israelites in his chariots (Exod. 14:9). Such methods of transportation were absent from today’s Egypt before the arrival of the Hyksos around 1650 BCE. The four-wheeled chariots displayed in the Standard of Ur were driven by a charioteer and a warrior. The Standard of Ur found in the cemetery shows a civilization that had well-equipped soldiers and charioteers, with scenes that display dead and captured prisoners.¹⁹ The civilization existed in Ur between 2600–2340 BCE and was overthrown by the forces of Sargon I and his related Semitic tribes.

Nothing like this civilization existed among the Semites in the two kingdoms of Akkad and Sumer. However, there were close cultural similarities between the civilization buried in Ur and the earliest dynasties of today’s Egypt. The Great Death Pit was most likely the one belonging to the Pharaoh of the Exodus story, since the descriptions in the biblical narrative and the Quran match the lifestyle depicted in this Pit. The

elaborate female burial, the entrance was guarded by six armed men… All the bodies within the pit were female; four harpists and then sixty-four ladies-in-waiting lined up in orderly rows.²⁰ As Leonard Woolley noted: "Human sacrifice on a lavish scale, the bottom of the grave pit being crowded with the bodies of men and women who seemed to have been brought down here and butchered where they stood."²¹

The women were dressed in ceremonial clothing and their decorations included the bearded bull or cow and highly ornate gold jewelry. They were holding lyres designed with a golden bull’s head, an image of the god worshiped by biblical Pharaoh’s civilization, which the Israelites in captivity were accused of creating while Moses was communing with God on the mountain. One woman, Puabi, was wearing a golden bull amulet, and the bulls show human faces, an indication that the bearded bull was considered to be divine. There were many representations of the golden bull, one of the most striking found on a Great Lyre in the King’s grave.²² The civilization in Ur revealed a very fine skill in gold working and had artifacts in their graves, like lapis lazuli, whose origin was the mountains of Afghanistan. The materials used such as gold, silver, agate, copper, carnelian, and lapis lazuli indicates that this civilization traded with regions as far as today’s Egypt, Iran, Oman, the Persian Gulf regions, Anatolia, the Indus Valley, and Central Asia.²³ The style of artwork followed a tradition that began during the fourth millennium BCE in Uruk.²⁴

Nowhere else in ancient Sumer was such a golden bull god worshiped as in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. These kings or pharaohs ruled over a nation of simple Semites, who never buried their belongings with them in mass graves and certainly never practiced such human sacrifices. The only location where such a lifestyle could be found was in the earliest dynasties of Egyptian civilization in today’s Egypt, where households were buried near the king or Pharaoh. The sheer number of concubines in the Great Death-Pit was unmatched in the archaeological record. As P. R. S. Moorey/Sir Leonard Woolley state:

Fifty years later, nothing like these tombs has yet been found in Mesopotamia. There is no archaeological parallel to the wealth, the architecture, and, above all, to the ritual which they display. Who then were the people who received such rites?²⁵

The standard of art displayed by the artifacts in the Royal Cemetery of Ur was never achieved again. As Sir Leonard Woolley’s book states, it could not have been achieved over a short period of time. It would have taken a few centuries. The Quran’s description of Pharaoh’s "splendor and wealth in the life of the present (Surah 10:88) fits perfectly with the artwork of the Royal Cemetery of Ur. The Quran states that Pharaoh was a tyrant on the earth and one who transgressed all bounds" (Surah 10:83). Pharaoh afflicted the Israelites "with the worst penalties… slew your male children and saved alive your females" (Surah 7:141).

Exodus (1:9) states that the new kings who came after Joseph feared the Israelites who were more numerous and powerful. Pharaoh was afraid they would stand in his way when "there falleth out any war they might join also unto our enemies and fight against us. He deliberately afflicted them with heavy burdens in order to diminish their strength. The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew" (Exod. 1:12). So Pharaoh asked the Hebrew midwives to kill the sons as they were born, and save only the women, which they refused. Pharaoh then ordered his people to throw each son into the river and daughters should be saved alive (Exod. 1:22).

It should be obvious that the biblical narrative does not match the pharaohs of Egypt during the thirteenth century BCE, who did not practice such customs or female burials. The biblical writers, who attributed the Exodus story to the pharaohs of the thirteenth century BCE, evidently had a sketchy recollection of history and were passing on the narrative of their people orally over a lengthy period of time before they put it into writing during the first millennium BCE. Archaeology has shown that the Exodus could not have possibly taken place from Egypt during the fourteenth or thirteenth century BCE, or any other period from today’s Egypt.

As for the name Egypt, Flavius Josephus referred to it as Merse. The Arabic word is Misr which, like the Hebrew, has its roots in the Akkadian originals: misru(m), misirru, or misaru, which meant border or boundary. Sometimes it meant a territory or region. During the Islamic conquests, Misr was the word used for any settlement or urbanized area that grew out of the Arabian military camps, as they traveled through conquered terrain. In Aramaic, Misr meant a territory whose borders were defined and marked, including a frontier location. Later, Arab geographers would extend that definition and claimed it was a "large urban center where a ruler or governor resides and which has located there the administrative organs, treasury, etc. of its province."²⁶ However, the vowels present in the word Misr within the Quran’s story of the Exodus leads one to believe that the reference is to a territory that was considered to be part of Egypt, just as Hawaii is part of the United States.

If a civilization of pharaohs existed in Mesopotamia for over three centuries, then one could conclude that Egypt had more extensive territorial holdings during the third millennium BCE, something absent from current theories promoted by Egyptologists. Toward the end of this book, I will give further evidence in the legends of one Mesopotamian sect, confirming that the Exodus did take place in southern Iraq, and they claim that the Egyptians of the Exodus story were actually related to them.

Scholars have always been baffled by the sudden appearance of an advanced civilization in today’s Egypt that shows no gradual social evolution. According to ancient Egyptian texts, however, there was a connection between Egypt and a region of many rivers that was considered to be their place of origin. Donald B. Redford remarked that while the civilization of Sumer and Akkad showed a gradual social evolution over several thousand years, Egypt seems to have taken a leap from the

Stone Age… into urban culture. High-rises suddenly replaced mud huts; a civil service superseded the village elders. A new sophisticated focus for human organization filled the void where only chiefdoms had occasionally appeared; a king sat over Egypt. How do we explain this quantum leap? The Question has often been posed, but no satisfying answer has been given. Of course, our problem may be lack of evidence.²⁷

The problem is not lack of evidence as much as it is the inability to connect the dots. Egyptian civilization did not emerge out of a vacuum overnight. The Quran explains what happened to Pharaoh that caused this void in the archaeological evidence. The Prophet Moses had prayed to God that He punish Pharaoh with an everlasting punishment. He asked God to destroy all the "features of their wealth (Surah 10:88). As a result, one of God’s final punishments was to unleash the forces of nature in the form of hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes as He leveled to the ground the great works and fine buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected. The fair promise was fulfilled for the children of Israel, because they had patience and constancy" (Surah 7:137).

Rabbinic literature describes hurricanes and tornadoes that were unleashed on the people of Pharaoh. Anyone experiencing Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the EF5 tornadoes, with 200 mph winds, that leveled Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 should be able to imagine that possibility. Ancient Egyptian texts that referred to this period said it was a natural disaster that destroyed the lands of Egypt’s origin.²⁸ The section is clearly describing Asiatic warriors arriving in today’s Egypt from the East, where they overthrew the civilization of pharaohs and turned their world upside down.

If one were to examine the combined descriptions of the Israelites in the wilderness, it becomes apparent that they were traveling throughout the lands between the Persian Gulf and northern Mesopotamia, covering the Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, and Arabian landscapes.²⁹ When the Israelites under Sargon I were preparing to conquer the promised land, the Amorites were not across the Jordan River as the Bible states but were near the Euphrates River. The pagan prophet Balaam mentioned in the Bible (Num. 22:5), who was advising the Amorites, was sitting along the banks of the Euphrates as he witnessed the Israelites preparing to conquer their lands.³⁰ The Amorites lived in Mesopotamia before many of them settled in Syria and Palestine. Archaeological evidence shows that the Amorites lived in Mesopotamia between 1800–1550 BCE. Babylon was their capital and Hammurabi, the great law-giver, was from their lineage.

According to a clay tablet unearthed by archaeologists, Sargon I traveled with 5,400 men, all related, trained as warriors, who dined together daily. As Sir Leonard Woolley states, the conquests of Sargon I "must have required a standing force of more or less professional soldiers and the organization of the whole people on a war footing."³¹ Sargon was evidently in command of the entire Israelite nation that was training in Arabia and preparing to conquer Mesopotamia. Comparable to the story of Joshua, continual warfare and conquest characterized the dynasty of Sargon I (Dynasty of Akkad or Agade). Sargon claimed he was successful in his conquests because the gods were with his people, a biblical term used to describe the angels.

Aspects of the story of the birth and life of Sargon I, written a millennium later, resemble the story of Moses. Sargon’s mother allegedly placed him in a reed basket and sent him down the Euphrates. Sargon was rescued by a Sumerian and eventually was employed by the King of Kish, while Moses, who was also placed in a basket and sent down a river, was rescued by the wife of Pharaoh and was raised in the royal household. Perhaps, in the minds of the writers of the ancient texts, they were equating Sargon I with Moses because they were connected historically. An inscription of Sargon I states that his mother put him "in a basket of rushes… then she put the basket into the river… the basket floated downstream to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, lifted me out… Akki… adopted me."³² Exodus (2:10) states that Moses was given his name because he was drawn from the water. The Quran states that Moses’s real name was Musa, which in Akkadian has a similar meaning to the biblical definition. In fact, musa and musu were interchangeable in Akkadian. The meaning is escape route, way out, going out, departure, or outflow, outlet. In other words, he escaped death in a watery environment. It seems the household of Pharaoh spoke Akkadian.³³

A key word yam in the Quran matches that found in the Hebrew narrative on the Exodus (14:9, 28) and Psalms (106:9–11, 136:15), namely, the yam suph, meaning sea of reeds that the Israelites crossed when escaping Pharaoh (Joshua 2:10). In the Quran (Surah 20:78), the yam was adjacent to a sea or bahr (Surahs 10:90, 20:77, 26:63). Passover is in the month of Nisan, and the names of the months in the Hebrew calendar match those used in Babylonia four millennia ago, among the Amorites. The overflow of water in the reed-filled lagoons of southern Iraq during the month of Nisan matches the descriptions of the Exodus in both rabbinic literature and the Quran.³⁴ The Bible (Exod. 8:1) describes the terrain using an Akkadian word agammu with a Sumerian original agam, which translates as swamp, reed lagoon, a perfect description of the marshlands of southern Iraq, where today’s Marsh Arabs live.³⁵

Ancient Babylonian writers often described the marshes as the sea, since they were filled with fishes. Herodotus confirmed that the original Red Sea was actually the Persian Gulf.³⁶ He described the Euphrates and the Tigris flowing from Armenia "into the Red Sea, which was obviously the Persian Gulf. He gives the impression that the Red Sea adjacent to modern Egypt was not the original Red Sea, but was the sea called Red." Perhaps it was given that name in order to conform to the biblical stories. It was not uncommon for the people of the Near East to name locations in order to conform to the biblical narrative.

Describing the Exodus, rabbinic literature states that God "enveloped the Egyptians in profound darkness," and the Quran (Surah 26:52) states that the Israelites escaped at night so Pharaoh’s people could not see them.³⁷ The marshlands of Iraq are known for their dense nightly fog which settles during certain months of the year, and would be a perfect cover for an escaping people. The high moisture content of the air and the thermal highs tend to produce a thick fog, which occurs frequently at night and in the early morning along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The area also produces flash flooding, especially during late winter and early spring when the snows melt and heavy precipitation from the mountains fills the already-inundated rivers and streams. Exodus (14:21) states that the "Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. The Quran states that Pharaoh and his troops pursued them at sunrise (Surah 26:60), and as soon as they entered the dried sea of reeds, the waters completely overwhelmed them and covered them up (Surah 20:78). At length, when overwhelmed with the flood," they drowned (Surah 10:90).

Unlike the majority of biblical scholars who refuse to examine the Quran, I was able to read the Arabic passages and find information that actually matched archaeological discoveries. The Quran is the only religious or historic text that describes the Israelites with Moses (Musa) in ancient Sumer, most likely a corrupted version of the Quran’s "Samer, which might have been the original name for Sumer. In the Quran’s description of the Prophet Musa (Moses) and the beni Isra’il in the wilderness, the person who led the beni Isra’il astray is referred to as a man from Samer." The man from Samer is actually mentioned three times (Surahs 19:51–53; 20:87–88, 96–97). The Samerian caused them to melt their ornaments and create an image of a golden calf, the god of Pharaoh, very evident in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. As Samuel Noah Kramer aptly wrote:

There was no clearly recognizable trace of Sumer or its people and language in the entire biblical, classical, and post classical literature. The very name Sumer was erased from the mind and memory of man for over two thousand years.³⁸

It seems Samuel Noah Kramer, like most biblical scholars, Assyriologists, and Egyptologists, was either reluctant to examine the Quran, or perhaps brushed it off as irrelevant.

The Quran also states that during his lifetime, the Prophet Musa traveled with a companion to the junction of "the two seas, naming it Bahrain. There is no doubt in my mind that the reference is to today’s island-nation of Bahrain, where the indigenous population has always been Shi’ites. The island of Bahrain earned its name because it was a junction of two seas. There is the saltwater sea that surrounds the island and a freshwater sea that flows from natural springs that rise up from beneath the sea bed, not far from the shore. Those springs used to be inland until the sea rose and inundated them, giving rise to the Arabic name Bahrain, meaning the two seas."³⁹

When the Prophet Musa received his Tablets of Laws from God, he was in a range of sacred mountains that the Quran refers to as Al Tur. The Bible erroneously claims Moses was at Mount Sinai, in today’s Sinai Peninsula. Archaeologists have shown that the location in Sinai was impossible. However, a range of sacred mountains was said to exist at one time in ancient Armenia, within the region of the Taurus and Caucasus Mountains. One gets the impression that the highest of those mountains was destroyed, split, or diminished by a massive earthquake.⁴⁰ Al Sina’ (the name of a mountain within the range called Al Tur) was most likely one of those mountains, but the highest one that fits the biblical and the Quran’s description, as well as descriptions found in other ancient Near Eastern texts, was named Mount Taurus, said to be located in a region where the Euphrates begins, probably Al Tur of the Quran. Ancient cartographers in Armenia depicted the region surrounding Mount Taurus as the original Garden of Eden, the source of the great rivers Euphrates, Tigris, and Karun. They also depicted God at the top of those mountains, controlling the flow of those rivers.⁴¹ Arrian, the historian of Alexander the Great, claimed that Mount Taurus was part of the range of mountains that extended to the Himalayas in Asia.⁴² The Ethiopic texts also claim that the mountains that began with the sacred range within ancient Armenia were connected to the highest peaks in Asia.⁴³

Key aspects of the lives of the ancient prophets and patriarchs can be traced to the Akkadian-speaking world, and the artifacts mentioned in the Quran and rabbinic literature as inventions of the Prophets David (Daoud) and Solomon (Suleiman), as well as important features of their lives, can be traced to Sumer and Akkad.⁴⁴ Rabbinic literature and the Quran state that Solomon had invented glass and had used it within his unique palace to create a translucent blue sheet of glass below his throne, giving the impression to the Queen of Saba’ (Sheba) that it was a body of water. The Quran states that the "palace was paved smooth with slabs of glass so it looked like a lake of water (Surah 27:44). Rabbinic texts further state that Solomon had a house made of glass.⁴⁵ The Hebrew word for glass" is believed to have come from the Akkadian and the term was later adapted to biblical Hebrew and Aramaic.⁴⁶

The earliest sample of glass was found in ancient Sumer dated to the period after the conquests of Sargon I and his Dynasty of Agade. It is evident that the knowledge of glassmaking was known during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Ancient texts dating to the Assyrian Empire reveal a reverence for the original glassmakers, with religious rituals like sacrifices made to honor their memory prior to producing the glass. Terminology used in the art of glassmaking is in bilingual texts dating to Hammurabi’s reign. Those texts have Sumerian and Akkadian versions. One from Nippur was written in Sumerian and predates the others to the period early in the second millennium BCE. Anzahhu glass appeared as part of the inventory of a member of a wealthy government employee during the Third Dynasty of Ur.⁴⁷ Part of a translucent glass rod of light blue/green color was excavated at Eshnuna. At Eridu, a lump of "very bubbly opaque blue glass was found dated to the beginning of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2100 BCE).⁴⁸ As Leo Oppenheim and his colleagues argue, the lack of mention of glass in Ur III texts or any texts from other cities should be taken as a sign that anzahhu-glass as material for containers represents the earliest phase in the complex history of Mesopotamian glasses as reflected in written records."⁴⁹

Blue is the base color most used in the earliest samples of glass vessels (fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE). Those dated between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE used dark base colors like black, brown-black, and green-black. Considering that the earliest samples in the post-Sargon I era were blue led me to deduce that the desire to use the same base color had something to do with respect for the greatest master of the craft. In order to imitate a lake of water, Solomon would have had to make glass with a bluish tint.

One of the most surprising discoveries in Assyrian Nimrud is the large number of glass artifacts dated to the fifteenth or fourteenth centuries BCE. The collection includes some of the oldest examples of clear glass bowls. The 150 glass bowls discovered and dated to the eighth or seventh centuries BCE give the impression of having been blown, a technique that was previously believed to have developed much later and was practiced by first century BCE Syrians.⁵⁰ The Bible tells us the Israelites lived among various people like the Hittites, Hurrians, Amorites, and Jebusites, to name a few. The texts on glassmaking and horse-training were written in Akkadian. Glass vessels have been found in palaces among the Kassites between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries BCE. A sizable number of Mesopotamian glass vessels, some dated to the sixteenth century BCE, have been found in the northern city of Alalakh, a Hurrian city with Hittite and Amorite ties.

Solomon’s glass palace could not have existed in Palestine during the time frame depicted in the Bible, since the novelty of glassmaking had diminished by the first millennium BCE. In fact, Leo Oppenheim states that there was a "rather abrupt disappearance of glass after the eleventh century " and very few artifacts of glass have been unearthed in Palestine, most of which were considered to be imports.⁵¹ Even the glass objects from Egypt were considered to have been imports from Mesopotamia. The ingredients used to make glass in Ur most likely came from Iran and Afghanistan. Scholars used the recipes preserved in ancient Assyrian texts to recreate the glass of "unexpectedly high quality… entirely transparent but had a faint pale blue color." As Leo Oppenheim states:

We have no means of finding out under what stimulus or where in the ancient Near East this technological breakthrough occurred, we only know that from the middle of the second millennium B.C. onward imitations of colored stones are mentioned prominently in texts which describe jewelry and the like.⁵²

Solomon was also known for his love of horses and his skill in horse-training. The Assyrian texts found in the library of the last of the Assyrian kings, Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) refer to the skills that rabbinic literature and the Quran tell us Solomon was known for. As Ashurbanipal’s empire crumbled, he became a scholar, reading and learning from scribes. He ordered the preservation of ancient Mesopotamian texts, had them translated into Assyrian, and established the largest library known during the period. Thirty thousand of his texts written on clay tablets survived as Nineveh was sacked and burned. Some of the cuneiform texts on glassmaking found in Nineveh’s library could be found in Boghazkoy, the ancient Hittite capital, which makes sense since the Hittites were also related to the Israelites. What is revealing about the texts is the manner in which they were categorized. The style of the texts reflected the category they fell in, but the ones that stand out are those that describe glassmaking and horse-training, which are distinctly similar. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement that these were the skills of Solomon.

The domestication of the horse began in southern Russia around 3200 BCE, but equestrian skills began toward the end of the third millennium BCE somewhere in the highlands of Iran. The skill of harnessing, training, and riding horses commenced sometime after Sargon I established the Akkadian Empire. Horse-drawn chariots were used in warfare during the early second millennium BCE. For the next thousand years, we find them throughout the Near East and Aegean. In fact, it was the Hyksos rulers who introduced horse-drawn chariots to Egypt during their reign as Pharaohs (ca. 1650–1550 BCE). The Hyksos had West Semitic names and had gradually settled in Egypt from the Canaanite lands. After they were ousted from Egypt, they settled in the region close to Gaza.

Around 1500 BCE, we find semi-nomadic tribes breeding horses in the steppes of southern Russia. After 1000 BCE, we learn of armored horsemen emerging from the mountainous regions. The Assyrians were the first to use the skills of horse-training on a large scale. Among the items they used for horses were blinkers, leather bridles, snaffle bits, electrum bits, armor, nose guards, and bells and tassels for decorations.⁵³ The semi-nomadic tribes who all exhibited the inventions of David and Solomon emerged from the mountains of Iran and eventually roamed the lands between Hungary and China.

David and Solomon were described in the Quran as shepherd-kings, and ruled over tribal people (Surahs 21:78–79). The Sumerians were known for their variety of sheep and legal cases involving the ownership of sheep. Examples of biblical-style laws could be found in Mesopotamia as far back as the late third millennium BCE. A large number of cases pertaining to shepherds and their lost sheep can be traced to the Third Dynasty of Ur. The Quran’s David and Solomon were rulers who settled cases involving shepherds and their flocks. In Old Babylon, cases were tried before judges. Prior to that, during Ur III, there were officials of the court who processed the cases and saw to it that punishment was met. Legal contracts were sometimes written and other times were made orally before witnesses in the courts, who affixed their seals on the tablets.

The Quran’s David was known for his skills in making defensive armor in the form of "coats of mail" "balancing well the rings of chain armor (Surah 34:11), since God made iron soft for David so his people could defend themselves from violence (Surah 21:80). The Taurus Mountains were rich in minerals and metals, and it was there that metallurgical technologies had their beginnings. Iron was being shaped as early as 2000 BCE, coinciding with the Third Dynasty of Ur. The word for smelter, furnace," as found in Leviticus (11:35), which David would have needed to mold his iron, is believed to have been Akkadian in origin, borrowed by the Sumerians. The Hebrew, however, developed from the Akkadian.⁵⁴ One can conclude that the individual who introduced the art of smelting would have come from the Akkadian world, but iron did not.

The Hittites, who were related to the Israelites, lived in Anatolia and the Taurus Mountains. There, they manipulated various metals, including iron, and were known for their mastery and monopoly over iron. The biblical Hebrew word for iron was not derived from an Akkadian original, and there has been speculation that the origin is Phoenician or Ugaritic, but that is not certain. The origin of the word is still uncertain.⁵⁵

The Hittite attack on Babylon in the early sixteenth century BCE and their attacks on Egypt established them as a formidable power. During the early part of the fourteenth century BCE, their empire stretched between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Once the Hittite power diminished, however, the use of iron spread to other groups. By the first millennium BCE, their adversaries had the same technology that could be used against them.

Eventually, the skills of iron-smelting spread to Syria and Mesopotamia, culminating in the Iron Age (1150–900 BCE) when the techniques had spread. David could not have invented the skill of iron-smelting during the biblical time frame because the skill was commonplace by then. The Assyrian kings who protected the knowledge of iron-working made sure very few people had access to iron.⁵⁶ The style of defensive armor that David is said to have invented, namely coats of mail with rings of chain armor, had spread to many tribes who emerged from the mountainous regions of Iran and Iraq over the 1,300 years that followed the fall of the kingdoms of Akkad and Sumer. All these tribesmen were known as equestrian archers, whose cavalry wore armor similar to those of the Scythians, with overlapping scales made of iron and a combination of iron and bronze, giving the equestrian rider flexibility of movement. They also used ringmail in their defensive attire, and their societies were pastoralists. Among them were the Sarmatians, who were related to the Scythians and spoke a language related to Persian. Other related tribes were the Aorsi, Siraces, Iazyges, Roxolani, Sauromatae, and the Alans. They were no doubt all related to the Israelites. Eventually, the technique of armor-production spread to the Greeks, and the Scythian weapons have been found among the Germans and Mongolians.

The entire life of David and Solomon, whether it was the descriptions in the Bible (Psalms), rabbinic literature, or the Quran, were spent in a mountainous terrain that was clearly a bird refuge as we find in the Zagros Mountains of Persia (Surahs 21:79, 27:16–17, 34:10, 38:17–19), famous as one of the most important bird sanctuaries in the world. Even Abraham is depicted in this region (Surah 2:260). Solomon’s reference to the hoopoe (hoopoe lark or Alaemon alaudipes) as the important bird in the story of the Queen of Saba’ (Sheba) takes us to Mesopotamia and western Iran. The hoopoe is found in abundance in Iraq.⁵⁷ In rabbinic literature, the Queen of Saba’ was said to be in the city of Kitor, perhaps today’s Qatar.⁵⁸ The quails and the manna that the Israelites had to survive on in the wilderness are all indigenous to the Persian Gulf nations and Iran. Western Iran, the Karun River, other important rivers in the Zagros Mountain areas, as well as the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates are known to be some of the most important regions in the world where migrating birds of Eurasia settle during the winter months. In fact, five hundred and two species of birds inhabit this area, with over two hundred species that settle there during their migratory periods. The mountainous terrain has an abundance of birds, and the names of many of these bird species fill the pages of the biblical narrative (Deut. 14:11–20) (Psalms) and the Quran (Surah 38:18, 21:79, 27:16, 34:10, 17:55).

The Quran describes the Israelites in the wilderness near towns, and they were given "the shade of clouds, and sent down to them manna and quails (Surah 7:160). Evidently, they were on the periphery of a land where quails were in abundance year-round. Rabbinic literature states that God sent them quails which appeared from the sea: Toward evening thick swarms of quails came up from the sea, and covered the whole camp, taking flight quite low, not two ells above the ground, so that they might be easily caught."⁵⁹ Quails are abundant in the wildlife refuges of the Persian Gulf nations.

The reem that David came across (Num. 23:22; Job 39:9; Psalms 22:21; 29:6) was native to the Zagros Mountains of western Persia. The word had an Akkadian original, rimu, meaning wild ox that is now extinct. Even the lions in the stories of David and Solomon, that inhabited their mountains, were indigenous to Iraq and Iran before they too became extinct.⁶⁰ The Bible describes the shepherding of flocks by David and Moses. They protected their sheep from lions, bears, and wild animals. They pastured in mountainous terrain. The Babylonian and Assyrian kings were known for their hunting of lions, often depicted in their artwork.⁶¹

The inventions that the Quran states were those of Solomon, included fountains of "molten brass as well as arched mihrabs, images, basins as large as reservoirs, and (cooking) cauldrons fixed (in their places) (Surahs 34:12–13). These were all novelties during the life of Solomon, and many were discovered by archaeologists unearthing the civilization of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The temple of Bur-Sin had a hall of justice in it as well as a smelting furnace, with evidence that copper and other metals were melted there. From its courtyard, one can move on to the temple of Nin-gal. There we find a sanctuary with a high statue-based; a paved floor sloped to a drain; a narrow chamber, apparently an ablution-place; an area one could call the holy of holies; a stepped altar and the benches for the statues and the sacred vessels; and rooms with sacrificial vessels. In another location within the temple, we find a brick bitumen-proofed water-tank and an area where a metal ablution-stoup rested. We find three great archways that led to the sanctuary. There was also a temple kitchen taking up a large space. There was a beehive-shaped bread-oven and a cooking-range of fire-clay with flat top and circular flues."⁶²

The Mausoleums of Ur III had all the features of Solomon’s inventions: arched doorways, the cooking cauldrons, ablution vessels, tiled drains showing an understanding of plumbing so one could create stationary basins and cauldrons. There were also areas within the temple complex that were locations for images. Evidently, the list of these inventions in the Quran was an indication of the location of David and Solomon, as well as the time period in which they lived. One of the best examples of the arch could be seen in the temple built by Bur-Sin at Dublalmach (1895–1874 BCE) during the First Dynasty of Isin, which succeeded the Third Dynasty of Ur. As Sir Leonard Woolley describes it:

Its most arresting feature was the huge arched doorway which occupied the greater part of the width of the façade and was closed by doors