User talk:FimusTauri/Chedor

Re: FirmusTauri requests for citation: I can't do much with the Documentary hypothesis section; I don't know anything about that. The other requests I will do my best withRktect (talk) 15:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I deliberately removed all of the citations when I set up this copy, simply for clarity. I realise that some of the citations existed in the original article (before you became involved). These are still on the original page and can be restored when we are finally satisfied with this version.
 * Meantime, are you happy with the way I have re-written the article? Does it accurately (and succinctly) reflect what you intended to say? I am more than willing to tweak or make wholesale changes if they are required.--FimusTauri (talk) 15:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm very happy with the work you are doing and your approach to it which is well organized. I'm making a few minor changes as I go along to try and get some flow going with the cites and whether we are talking about the geopolitical context, the linguistic evidence or whatever. Feel free to add more requests for citations and edit me as necessary to make things shorter and more concise. I'm taking your requests out as I add cites so if the references don't address your concerns just put another request for cites and I will hit it again.


 * I have fallen into the trap of WP:OR as I looked at this because I realized the passage can be read differently than as a list of four kings and I went and looked up the various ways it might read in Akkadian.


 * I never liked the fact that neither Tidal or Chedorlaomer worked. There were no such kings in the same time and place and secondly the distance between Elam and Anatolia wouldn't suggest it would be the role of the Elamite king to prosecute the campaign; imagine the logistics of a supply line stretching the length of the Euphrates. Finally references to both kings had to be tricked out with a lot of speculation to say anything sensible about them.


 * The result of the linguistic analysis was shocking to me. In Akkadian it makes perfect sense to have one king Amraphel in power "URU Ki" or at "this place here", rather than a second king Arloch or Aruki.  That just jumped out at me. Continuing I found that rather than "Arloch king of Ellasar" I now had  asharchedorl a omer tD Elam. (URU Ki asar ched o rl a omer tD Elam) all perfectly good Akkadian, most of it grammatical and an interesting comment. About all I could do was reference it to the Akkadian words.


 * I understand that you will comment this out to the talk page but i had to tell somebody:) Rktect (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Please contune to make any changes you feel necessary. I would ask, in the event of a major change, you place a note of explanation in here so that I can understand your reasoning - this will help prevent me from making a mistake when I 'tidy up' your edits.
 * The 'linguistic matches' section is becoming a concern. Not because of any errors, POVs, OR etc, but simply because it is too long. It was already longer than I would have liked and you have now added more. Again, I emphasise that I understand the need for a full explanation, but in the context of a WP article, there is far too much information there. Much of it seemes, to me anyway, to be at best marginal in its relevance to the article. I am loathe to remove any parts myself (although I have just done so, mostly to avoid repetition), because I cannot be certain I won't remove something important, so could you trim this section down somewhat? As a rough guide, this section really ought to be no more than a screenful.--FimusTauri (talk) 09:47, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * With reference to the specific points you raise about the four kings. Ever since Sargon (and maybe earlier) there were kings who ruled 'from the upper sea to the lower sea' (i.e. from the gulf to the meditteranean. These "empires" differed from the more 'modern' view of empire. They were more like a series of city-states each paying tribute to the central authority (and supplying armies when needed), but otherwise having a semi-autonomous existance. In this way, the "conquering" king could hold power over a much larger region. You will notice, however, that few of these "empires" lasted a very long time - at least in part down to the very logistical problems that you highlight. However, what is certain is that the empires existed. There is evidence that almost all of the major powers of lower mesopotamia held an empire that spanned the region at some time or another. In the context of Genesis 14, the most logical arrangement to me (and, yes, this is OR, which is why I do not intend to put it into the article until I can find a scholar that agrees with me) would be an "empire" of Elam that encompasses lower Mesopotamia as far as Syria. This would be allied to an Anatolian "empire" that includes Ellasar as a vassal. The role of Amraphel would likely be as a vassal of Elam, but may be an ally ruling northern mesopotamia instead.
 * Another point that often seems to be glossed over is the reason why this war happened. The received wisdom seems to be that Chedorlaomer is simply trying to expand his empire, but I suspect (more OR) that there is more to it than this. With the emergance of the Ebla documents we begin to learn that the cities of the plain were probably more powerful than previously thought (the five cities were probably a 'mini-empire' in their own right, ruled over by Sodom). In this context, an alliance involving Elam, northern mesopotamia and Anatolia starts to make sense if those powers all saw the plain cities as a potential threat.
 * In summary, I can see many circumstances in which an alliance/empire of that size would occur.--FimusTauri (talk) 10:02, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Akkadian conflation is rather suprising and given that Akkadian was the lingua franca of this era it is entirely possible that the original story was written in that language (and the later, Hebrew, version may well be a corruption). However, you are correct to say that this is OR. It is certainly not the mainstream view. If, however, you can find a source that says the same thing then it is certainly worth including in the article. Incidentally, how would "URU Ki asar ched o rl a omer tD Elam" translate?--FimusTauri (talk) 10:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe the "linguistics for Chedorlomer" should break out to a separate page.


 * I agree about the rise of empires. Source which agrees with you would be "Bahrain through the Ages", Michael Roaf's CAM, "The Pre and Proto History of the Arabian Penninsula" by Nayim, and a whole slew of world history atlases. Even the "Epic of Gilgamesh" touches on the extent of the trade. The "Rise of the Greeks" and "In Search of the Indo Europeans" back up your argument and I have referenced them into the article. Empires in Mesopotamia, Elam, Syria, Anatolia, and all the places which touched on them overlapped and interacted into what some people refer to as Syro-Anatolia focusing on the landfolk of the Tigris, Euphrates and Diyala and somewhat neglecting the sea peoples in the upper an lower oceans into which the rivers flow.


 * Starting as early as the obsidian trade in the aceramic neolithic and building with the exchange of bulk cargos like Cedar and Juniper from the forests of Lebanon, limestone and granite from Egypt, bitumen and natron from the Dead Sea, copper from the Arabah; cereals, figs, grapes from the fertile crescent in exchange for manufactured goods like amuluts and cylinder seals. Trade is the technological advance that acts as the engine for both civilization and the development of langugages. I'm sure there is already an article we can link to and add to as required.


 * The range over which it is organized is astounding. In the Mari letters we learn that by the Jemder Jasr and the time of Sargon goods are passed along amongst the ickthiophagi from city to city and port to port along with news, new religions, new technology, the use of horses and sails, exotic goods like spices; exotic woods like teak, ebony, boxwood; incense and perfumes; frankincense, myhhr, gems like carnelian and lapis lazuli, metals like tin, copper, bronze, gold and iron; Sargon says the ships of Meluha (Lothal, Harrappa and Mohenjo Dari on the Indus), Makka, (Oman) and Dilmun, the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Fakila island and Tepe Yaha) Dock at the quays of Agad.


 * The goods of Elam (modern Iran) come from places southand east of the Dyala; Anshan and the borders of Afhghanistan, and north up to lake Van. The etnolinguistic maps of the Kurds show the culture was spread along the route of the Parthian stations as far east as the Tarim Basin. All this trade flows back west up the Euphrates under the control of Babylon and then goes farther up to Mari at the bend of the Euphrates, up the Habur to Ashur in exchange for horses. The extent of what becomes the silk road then extends back through Afghanistan to China, and on through Anatolia to Europe and south through Lebanon, Syria and Cannan to Egypt and Libya.


 * There are connections by boats and horses up the rivers and across the mountians to the steppes of Asia and by caravan across the Tarim basin to China. There is shipping in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, the Indies and the South China Sea. To the north trade routes cross the Black sea and run up into Europe along the Dneiper, Dneister, Danube and Don trading for amber. From the Mediterranean there are routes up the Po and the Rhine across western Europe to the North Sea. Unfortunately there is no room for any of that in the confines of this article and again maybe a link to a separate page.


 * Forgive me for going on like that, you touched on one of my major interests.


 * Your point about the empire of Sodom and Gomorrah is interesting. Biblically it runs the entire length of the Seir from Hammath to Horeb and includes the Amalek, the Emim, the Zuzim, the Rephedim, and the Nephelim all giants; apparently mostly warriors. From inscriptians portraying them they are not from any recognizable afroasiatic, caucasian or semitic culture; almost a different species of titans like left overs from an earlier time when the earth was still covered with ice and it took lugals or big men to survive. Again we need to break this out as a separate article and find facts to support it, but the idea is fascinating and the question it raises of what did Sodom have that Chedorlaomer wanted  or feared leads into the subject of the Kurds (from Sumerian kur, mountain folk, enemy) and their very wide spread empire of Kurdistan. In effect you have the people of the air (the mountian Amalek and Kurds), the land folk who could be divided up into the farmers archaeologists focus on and the horsemen like the Hittites, Mitanni and Assyrians, the sea people whose ocean empire is larger than Libya, Asia and Europe combined because it includes the waters that surround them, and then the kenites or smiths, the men of fire who manufacure things of metals, glass, and ceramics in cities and are organize as brotherhoods of skilled tradesmen and professionals, scribes, priests, artificers and engineers quite apart from their ethnic origins.


 * It looks like for starters we will be tossing a lot of things we may want to go back to later Rktect (talk) 13:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

New section for easier editing
An important note of caution:

There is a vast amount of material that is relevant, verifiable, citable and notable and has a bearing on the subjects covered in this article. However, we must exercise restraint. This article is about Chedorlaomer (and by extension the battle of the plain, since no other article exists for it). Any information we include must be referenced with respect to the subject of the article. In other words, having a plethora of references that tell the reader that, for example, khprr is used in Egyptian texts is excellent for an article about the Egyptain for 'dung beetle' or about the relevant pharoahs. In the context of Chedorlaomer, what we must have as a reference is someone who states that khprr may be the root of 'Chedor'. If we cannot present such a reference then we what we put in the article is classed as synthesis and is therefore original research. On the other hand, in such a case, we do not need to cite references to the use of khprr, because our referenced source should.

This is just one example. By extension, you should be able to see that there is much in the current article that is at risk of being categorised as OR. Like you (I am assuming) I have many ideas about this era of human history, but we have to be careful not to treat a WP article as a forum for our own ideas. Whatever we include must be verifiable as the work of a third party.--FimusTauri (talk) 14:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I should let you know that I am currently limited in my internet access time to 9-5 Mon-Fri, so will not now be able to make further contributions til monday morning.--FimusTauri (talk) 16:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I put some of the linguistic questions on ANE to see if there is a response. Its a moderated group with a number of Akkadian speakers familiar with the topic and period. We can then input a brief consensus version and get rid of the rest of the speculation Rktect (talk)


 * Just done a few minor tweaks. Essentially, the article is looking pretty good. I am going to invite a couple of people to look over this version to see if they can spot anything I may have missed and then I think we can transfer it back to the main article and continue working on it from there.--FimusTauri (talk) 10:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Great Rktect (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Final Draught
I have now moved this into the original article. Any further work should be continued there.--FimusTauri (talk) 09:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)