Acts 29

Article Index

Acts 29

Introduction 

 

 Acts 28: 30, 31 And <1161> Paul <3972> dwelt <3306> (5656) two <1333> <0> whole <3650> years <1333> in <1722> his own <2398> hired house <3410>, and <2532> received <588> (5711) all <3956> that came in <1531> (5740) unto <4314> him <846>,
31 Preaching <2784> (5723) the kingdom <932> of God <2316>, and <2532> teaching <1321> (5723) those things which concern <4012> the Lord <2962> Jesus <2424> Christ <5547>, with <3326> all <3956> confidence <3954> , no man forbidding him <209>.

Acts 28: Last Phrase

ASV: No man forbidding him.

BBE: No orders were given that he was not to do so.

DBY: With all freedom unhinderedly.

DOU: Without prohibition.

FEN: With unlimited freedom.

Ferrar Fenton: This eloquent history of a part of St. Paul’s life, written by his cousin and Physician, St. Luke, under his own supervision, was left unfinished, probably by his execution and martyrdom. By this we have lost the record of his Evangelization of Western Europe, - which would have been the most interesting part to us. – F.F.

KJ21: No man forbidding him.

LAM: without hindrance

NKJV: No one forbidding him.

ROTH: With all freedom of speech, without hindrance.

RSV: Quite openly and unhindered.

RWEB: No man forbidding him.

WEB: No man forbidding him.

WEY: Without let or hindrance.

YLT: Unforbidden.

[Check Footnotes]:

ASV:

Moffat

Murdoch: 1915

Syriac

The Bible is silent for a period of approximately six years after the trial and acquittal of Paul in Rome. He visited Spain during this time [Romans 15:28]. Did he also visit Britain? He was certainly aware of its existence. He travelled through Gaul [France].

A document known as the Sonnini Manuscript, more commonly known as the “Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,” relates Paul’s missionary journey to Spain, Britain and France. It deals with a part of his compulsory ‘house arrest” in Rome.

The Sonni Manuscript was discovered in “Sonnini’s Travels in Turkey and Greece.” A copy was purchased at the sale of the personal library of the late Right Honourable Sir John Newport, Bart., Ireland. His family’s coat of arms was engraved on the cover. He was in possession of it for over thirty years. Together with this find was a document from the Sultan of Turkey, granting C.S. Sonnini permission to travel in all sections of the Ottoman domain. Sonnini translated the document from the original Greek manuscript located in the Archives at Constantinople [Istanbul], and was presented to him by Sultan Abdoul Achmet.

The contents of the title page of the book in which the English translation of the manuscript was found read: “Travels in Turkey and Greece undertaken by the order of Louis XVI, and with the authority of the Ottoman Court, by Sonnini, member of several scientific or literary societies of the Society of Agriculture of Paris, and of the Observers of Men. “Mores multorum videt it ubes.” - Hor., London: Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster Row, 1801.”

Louis XVI reigned from A.D. 1774 to A.D. 1793. Sonnini procured his manuscript during this time frame. And remember, he was a Frenchman. [The French were long-time enemies of the English]. It was first made available in English in 1800.


Is the Sonnini Manuscript Genuine?


It was preserved in the Archives at Constantinople.
It possesses appearance of being of antiquity.
It is written in the Greek language and bears the manner of the Book of Acts.
The places and people named are Roman.
It bears concise Scriptural brevity and relates the Divine purpose.
It’s resembles the Gospel character.
It ends with Amen. [Only three books of the New Testament close without Amen: Acts, James and 3 John.
How and why was the manuscript preserved at Constantinople?



Authorities [E. Raymond Capt]

1. St Clement of Rome (A.D. 30 - 100) wrote: “Saint Paul, also having seven times worn chains, and been hunted and stoned, received the prize of such endurance. For he was the herald of the Gospel to the West, as well as in the East, and enjoyed the illustrious reputation of the faith in teaching the whole world to be righteous. And after he had been to the extremity of the West, he suffered martyrdom before the sovereigns of mankind; and thus delivered from this world, he went to his holy place, the most brilliant example of steadfastness that we possess.” [Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 5]

St. Clement belonged to the first century, knew St. Pul personally, and was the third Bishop of Rome. St. Paul speaks of him in his Epistle to the Philippians, 4:3: “With Clement also and other of my fellow labourers whose names are in the book of life.” Irenaeus (born about A.D. 130) himself a pupil of polycarp (the friend of St. John) thus speaks of him: “Clement, who had seen the blessed Apostles and conversed with them; who had the preaching of the Apostles still sounding in his ears, and their traditions before his eyes.”

2. Theodoret the Blessed, Bishop of Cyrus neat Antioch in Syria (born about A.D. 390), noted as an accomplished man of letters and learned Church historian, writing about A.D. 435 said of St. Paul (the leather-worker):

a. “Our fishermen and tax gatherers and the leather-worker have brought unto all men the laws of the Gospel, and they persuaded not only Romans and their tributaries, but also the Scythians and Sauomatian nations (or Cimrians), and Germans, to accept the laws of the Crucified. (Graed. Aff. Cur. Sermo. IX)
b. St. Paul reached Spain and brought salvation to the Islands of the Sea.” (Bishop Edwards of St. Asaph’s “Landmarks in the History of the Welsh Church,” page 4) This fits in with St. Jerome’s statement that, besides visiting Spain, St. Paul went from “ocean to ocean,” and St. Chrysostum’s teaching writings that Paul went “from Illyricum to the very ends of the earth.”

3. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (A.D. 633 – 637 wrote: “ ….. the unwearied champion of the orthodox faith against the monotheistic heresy, not worthy to be ranked with Athanasius and Cyril among the defenders of the truth against successive depravations.” (Smith and Wace, Dic. Christ. Biog., Vol. IV, p. 719) Robert Parsons in his “Three Conversions of England (p. 22) cites Sophronius as saying, in his sermon on “The nativity of the Apostles,” that St. Paul came to Britain. Parsons also cites –

4. Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers (born about A.D. 530), well-known Christian hymn-writer, author of “Vexilla Regis” (The Royal Banners forward go), speaks of St. Paul, “crossing the ocean” and visiting “Britain and the extreme West.” Although a Frenchman, this cultivated literary man must have met many of the refugee Britons who had fled to France before the Saxon invader and would have learned many traditions from them.

5. A very ancient tradition assigns the foundation of Bangor Abbey (in Britain) to St. Paul. Its rule was known as the “Rule of Paul.” The Abbots claimed to be his successors. Over every gate of the Abbey was Paul’s command, “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” (a paraphrase from II Thess. 3:10)

6. The correspondence of Paul and Seneca (mentioned by Jerome in the fourth century A.D.) This ancient manuscript in Merton College, Oxford, which purports to contain a series of letters between St. Paul and Seneca, makes more than one allusion to St. Paul’s residence in Siluria, Britain,

These early documentary statements cannot lightly be dismissed. When considered together with the Biblical account of Paul’s life and teaching, and the archaeological evidence of the early Britons’ relationship with the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel (see King Solomon’s Temple - Capt) they afford convincing proof of St. Paul’s long sojourn in Britain and support the authenticity of the Long Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.



The Lost Chapter of the Book of Acts

1 And Paul, full of the blessings of Christ, and abounding in the spirit, departed out of Rome, determining to go into Rome, for he had a long time proposed to journey thitherward, and was minded also to go from thence to Britain.
2 For he had heard in Phoenicia that certain of the children of Israel, about the time of the Assyrian captivity, had escaped by sea to “The Isles afar off” as spoken by the Prophet, and called by the Romans – Britain.
3 And the Lord commanded the gospel to be preached far hence to the Gentiles [nations], and to the lost sheep of the House of Israel [Acts 9:15; 22:21]
4 And no man hindered Paul; for he testified boldly of Jesus before the tribunes and among the people; and he took with him certain of the brethren which abode with him at Rome, and they took shipping at Ostrium and having the winds fair, were brought safely into a haven of Spain.
5 And much people were gathered together from the towns and villages, and the hill country; for they had heard of the conversion of the Apostles, and the many miracles which he had wrought.
6 And Paul preached mightily in Spain, and great multitudes believed and were converted, for they perceived he was an apostle sent from God.
7 And they departed out of Spain, and Paul and his company finding a ship in Armorica sailing unto Britain, they were therein, and passing along the South Coast, the reached a port called Raphinus.
8 Now when it was voiced abroad that the apostle had landed on their coast, great multitudes of the inhabitants met him, and they treated Paul courteously and he entered in at the east gate of their city, and lodged there in the house of an Hebrew and one of his own nation.
9 And on the morrow he came and stood upon Mount Lud and the people thronged at the gate, and assembled in the Broadway, and he preached Christ unto them, and they believed the word and the testimony of Jesus.
10 And at even the Holy Ghost fell upon Paul, and he prophesied, saying, Behold in the last days the God of Peace shall dwell in the cities, and the inhabitants thereof shall be numbered: and in the seventh numbering of the people, their eyes shall be opened, and the glory of their inheritance shine forth before them. The nations shall come up to worship on the mount that testifieth of the patience and long suffering of a servant of the Lord.
11 And in the latter days new tidings of the Gospel shall issue forth out of Jerusalem, and the hearts of the people shall rejoice, and behold, fountains shall be opened, and there shall be no more plague.
12 In those days there shall be wars and rumours of war; and a king shall rise up, and his sword, shall be for the healing of the nations, and his peacemaking shall abide, and the glory of his kingdom a wonder among princes.
13 And it came to pass that certain of the Druids came unto Paul privately, and showed by their rites and ceremonies they were descended from the Jews [Judahites] which escaped from bondage in the land of Egypt, and the Apostle believed these things, and he gave them the kiss of peace.
14 And Paul abode in his lodgings three months confirming in the faith and preaching Christ continually.
15 And after these things Paul and his brethren departed from Raphinus and sailed unto Atium in Gaul.
16 And Paul preached in the Roman garrison and among the people, exhorting all men to repent and confess their sins.
17 And there came unto him certain of the Belgae to enquire of him of the new doctrine, and of the man Jesus; and Paul opened his heart unto them and told them all things that had befallen him, howbeit, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; and they departed pondering among themselves upon the things which they had heard.
18 And after much preaching and toil, Paul and his fellow labourers passed into Helvetia, anc came to Mount Pontius Pilate, where he who condemned the Lord Jesus dashed himself down headlong, and so miserably perished.
19 And immediately a torrent gushed out of the mountain and washed his body, broken in pieces, into a lake.
20 And Paul stretched forth his hands upon the water, and prayed unto the Lord, sayingm O Lord God, give a sign unto all nations that here Pontius Pilate which condemned thine only begotten Son, plunged down headlong into the pit.
21 And Paul was yet speaking, behold, there came a great earthquake, and the face of the waters was changed, and the form of the lake like unto the Son of Man hanging in agony upon the Cross.
22 And a voice came out of heaven saying, Even Pilate hath escaped the wrath to come for he washed his hands before the multitude at the blood shedding of the Lord Jesus [Matthew 27:24].
23 When, therefore, Paul and those that were with him saw the earthquake, and heard the voice of the angel, they glorified God, and were mightily strengthened in the spirit.
24 And they journeyed and came to mount Julius where stood two pillars, one on the right hand and one on the left hand, erected by Caesar Augustus.
25 And Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, stood up between the two pillars, saying, Men and brethren these stones which ye see this day shall testify of my journey hence; and verily I say, they shall remain until the outpouring of the spirit upon all nations, neither shall the way be hindered throughout all generations.
26 And they went forth and came unto Illtricum, intending to go by Macedonia into Asia, and grace was found in all the churches, and they prospered and had peace. Amen!

7 Raphinus is the Roman name for Sandwich in Kent. In Saxon times there was, still standing in Sandwich, and old house called the “House of the Apostles,” and tradition has it that Paul was one of the apostles.
8 Mount Lud is Ludgate Hill and Broadway where St. Paul’s Cathedral stands in London.
10 This reference is to the very first census ever conducted in England. [1801] The punishment included ignorance of their heritage. The seventh and final census was conducted in 1861, the precise time irrefutable archaeological evidence was emerging from history as to the identity of the Ten Lost Tribes. If the document had been published in 1821, the first two censuses having already concluded, it could be considered spurious. The publication of the manuscript in [English] 1800 is 61 years prior to the conducting of the seventh census! However, validating, confirming archaeological evidence of the heritage did not emerge until Rawlinson’s investigation of the Behistun Rock and the Assyrian tablets were decoded.
22 The wrath to come is the Second Death – [Revelation 21:8].



Seven Times Prophecy:

Seven Times Punishment:

Leviticus 26:    
7 x 360 = 2,520 [721 B.C. – 1,800!]

1 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God. {standing…: or, pillar} {image of…: or, figured stone: Heb. a stone of picture}
2 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.
3 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
4 Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5 And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
6 And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. {rid: Heb. cause to cease}
7 And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8 And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
9 For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.
10 And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new.
11 And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you.
12 And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
13 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.
14 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments;
15 And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant:
16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. {over: Heb. upon}
17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
20 And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. {contrary…: or, at all adventures with me}
22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.
23 And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me;
24 Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
25 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26 And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.
27 And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me;
28 Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
30 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
31 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
32 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
35 As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
36 And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth. {shaken: Heb. driven}
37 And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
38 And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
39 And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
41 And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
42 Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.
46 These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.

1950-51 World Leader After the promise was fulfilled they returned to bondage where they are now!

At the Seventh Numbering of the People, Their Eyes Would be Opened and They Would Realize Their Inheritance

Queen Victoria knew who they were: The sun never set on the British Empire!


The First National Census Conducted in the British Isles:

1. 1801 16,237,300
2. 1811 18,509,116
3. 1821 21,272,187
4. 1831 24,392,485
5. 1841 27,239,404
6. 1851 27,958,143
7. 1861 29,571,644 [1861 - 1870]


Hosea 1: Their identity would have been known!

Hosea’s major ministry was to the Northern Ten tribes of Israel!

1 The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.
3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son.
4 And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. {avenge: Heb. visit}
5 And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
6 And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Loruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away. {Loruhamah: that is, Not having obtained mercy} {no…: Heb. not add any more to} {but…: or, that I should altogether pardon them}
7 But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.
8 Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.
9 Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. {Loammi: that is, Not my people}
10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. {in…: or, instead of that}
11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

Deuteronomy 29:28 FEN: The Secret Reasons are with our Ever Living God: but the revelations are with us and our children for ever, that we may practice the whole the whole of the decrees of this Law!


America Has Lost Pride in its Power:

Theodore Roosevelt related an incident expressing the pride of power during his term as president. Germany sent a battleship to Manila Bay, with the accompanying threat of securing the Philippines, at that time an American possession. Roosevelt sent the Kaiser a blunt note demanding the vessel be withdrawn immediately.

“The Kaiser didn’t know, then, that I meant it!” the president revealed. “So I sent another note. Only, I didn’t send this second note to the Kaiser. I sent it to Admiral Dewey, in command of the United States Pacific Fleet. It ordered the entire Fleet to steam full speed toward the German battleship, and if it did not turn around and go back, to sink it!” said Roosevelt with emphatic force! In those days, prior to World War I, America had pride in their national power.
<;br />But alas, today she sits like an old woman in a rocking chair, mumbling the indecisive rhetoric of appeasement and containment shown in both the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts. Even NATO acknowledges that the so-called bombardment of Iraq in the Gulf war was totally ineffective. Ex-President Bush, recalling his defeatist policies, now asserts, Sadam should have been destroyed. Now, this war has to be fought over again. One must consider that if the objectives of such undertakings are not military they must be political!

On the other hand, Israel, however, executes swift, decisive, action with surgical precision in operation after operation. She has pride in her power.


Two Whores in Egypt:

Ezekiel 23:1 The word <01697> of the LORD <03068> came again unto me, saying <0559> (8800),
2 Son <01121> of man <0120>, there were two <08147> women <0802>, the daughters <01323> of one <0259> mother <0517>:
And they committed whoredoms <02181> (8799) in Egypt <04714>; they committed whoredoms <02181> (8804) in their youth <05271>: there were their breasts <07699> pressed <04600> (8795), and there they bruised <06213> (8765) the teats <01717> of their virginity <01331>.
4 And the names <08034> of them were Aholah <0170> the elder <01419>, and Aholibah <0172> her sister <0269> : and they were mine, and they bare <03205> (8799) sons <01121> and daughters <01323>. Thus were their names <08034>; Samaria <08111> is Aholah <0170>, and Jerusalem <03389> Aholibah <0172>. {Aholah: that is, His tent, or, tabernacle} {Aholibah: that is, My tabernacle in her}
5 And Aholah <0170> played the harlot <02181> (8799) when she was mine <08478>; and she doted <05689> (8799) on her lovers <0157> (8764), on the Assyrians <0804> her neighbours <07138>,
6 Which were clothed <03847> (8803) with blue <08504>, captains <06346> and rulers <05461>, all of them desirable <02531> young men <0970>, horsemen <06571> riding <07392> (8802) upon horses <05483>.
7 Thus she committed <05414> (8799) her whoredoms <08457> with them, with all them that were the chosen <04005> men <01121> of Assyria <0804>, and with all on whom she doted <05689> (8804): with all their idols <01544> she defiled <02930> (8738) herself. {committed…: Heb. bestowed her whoredoms upon them} {the chosen…: Heb. the choice of the children of Asshur}
8 Neither left <05800> (8804) she her whoredoms <08457> brought from Egypt <04714>: for in her youth <05271> they lay <07901> (8804) with her, and they bruised <06213> (8765) the breasts <01717> of her virginity <01331>, and poured <08210> (8799) their whoredom <08457> upon her.
9 Wherefore I have delivered <05414> (8804) her into the hand <03027> of her lovers <0157> (8764), into the hand <03027> of the Assyrians <01121> <0804>, upon whom she doted <05689> (8804).
10 These discovered <01540> (8765) her nakedness <06172>: they took <03947> (8804) her sons <01121> and her daughters <01323>, and slew <02026> (8804) her with the sword <02719>: and she became famous <08034> among women <0802> ; for they had executed <06213> (8804) judgment <08196> upon her. {famous: Heb. a name}
11 And when her sister <0269> Aholibah <0172> saw <07200> (8799) this, she was more corrupt <07843> (8686) in her inordinate love <05691> than she, and in her whoredoms <08457> more than her sister <0269> in her whoredoms <02183>. {she was…: Heb. she corrupted her inordinate love more than, etc} {more than…: Heb. more than the whoredoms of her sister}
12 She doted <05689> (8804) upon the Assyrians <01121> <0804> her neighbours <07138>, captains <06346> and rulers <05461> clothed <03847> (8803) most gorgeously <04358>, horsemen <06571> riding <07392> (8802) upon horses <05483>, all of them desirable <02531> young men <0970>.
13 Then I saw <07200> (8799) that she was defiled <02930> (8738), that they took both <08147> one <0259> way <01870>,
14 And that she increased <03254> (8686) her whoredoms <08457>: for when she saw <07200> (8799) men <0582> pourtrayed <02707> (8794) upon the wall <07023>, the images <06754> of the Chaldeans <03778> pourtrayed <02710> (8803) with vermilion <08350>,
15 Girded <02289> with girdles <0232> upon their loins <04975>, exceeding <05628> (8803) in dyed attire <02871> upon their heads <07218>, all of them princes <07991> to look to <04758>, after the manner <01823> of the Babylonians <01121> <0894> of Chaldea <03778>, the land <0776> of their nativity <04138>:
16 And as soon as she saw <04758> them with her eyes <05869>, she doted <05689> (8799) upon them, and sent <07971> (8799) messengers <04397> unto them into Chaldea <03778>. {as soon…: Heb. at the sight of her eyes}
17 And the Babylonians <01121> <0894> came <0935> (8799) to her into the bed <04904> of love <01730> , and they defiled <02930> (8762) her with their whoredom <08457>, and she was polluted <02930> (8799) with them, and her mind <05315> was alienated <03363> (8799) from them. {Babylonians: Heb. children of Babel} {alienated: Heb. loosed, or, disjointed}
18 So she discovered <01540> (8762) her whoredoms <08457>, and discovered <01540> (8762) her nakedness <06172> : then my mind <05315> was alienated <03363> (8799) from her, like as my mind <05315> was alienated <05361> (8804) from her sister <0269>.
19 Yet she multiplied <07235> (8686) her whoredoms <08457>, in calling to remembrance <02142> (8800) the days <03117> of her youth <05271>, wherein she had played the harlot <02181> (8804) in the land <0776> of Egypt <04714>.
20 For she doted <05689> (8799) upon their paramours <06370>, whose flesh <01320> is as the flesh <01320> of asses <02543>, and whose issue <02231> is like the issue <02231> of horses <05483>.
21 Thus thou calledst to remembrance <06485> (8799) the lewdness <02154> of thy youth <05271>, in bruising <06213> (8800) thy teats <01717> by the Egyptians <04714> for the paps <07699> of thy youth <05271>.
22 Therefore, O Aholibah <0172>, thus saith <0559> (8804) the Lord <0136> GOD <03069>; Behold, I will raise up <05782> (8688) thy lovers <0157> (8764) against thee, from whom thy mind <05315> is alienated <05361> (8804), and I will bring <0935> (8689) them against thee on every side <05439>;
23 The Babylonians <01121> <0894>, and all the Chaldeans <03778>, Pekod <06489>, and Shoa <07772>, and Koa <06970>, and all the Assyrians <01121> <0804> with them: all of them desirable <02531> young men <0970>, captains <06346> and rulers <05461>, great lords <07991> and renowned <07121> (8803), all of them riding <07392> (8802) upon horses <05483> .
24 And they shall come <0935> (8804) against thee with chariots <02021>, wagons <07393>, and wheels <01534>, and with an assembly <06951> of people <05971>, which shall set <07760> (8799) against thee buckler <06793> and shield <04043> and helmet <06959> round about <05439>: and I will set <05414> (8804) judgment <04941> before <06440> them, and they shall judge <08199> (8804) thee according to their judgments <04941>.
25 And I will set <05414> (8804) my jealousy <07068> against thee, and they shall deal <06213> (8804) furiously <02534> with thee: they shall take away <05493> (8686) thy nose <0639> and thine ears <0241>; and thy remnant <0319> shall fall <05307> (8799) by the sword <02719>: they shall take <03947> (8799) thy sons <01121> and thy daughters <01323>; and thy residue <0319> shall be devoured <0398> (8735) by the fire <0784>.
26 They shall also strip <06584> (8689) thee out of thy clothes <0899>, and take away <03947> (8804) thy fair <08597> jewels <03627>. {fair…: Heb. instruments of thy decking}
27 Thus will I make thy lewdness <02154> to cease <07673> (8689) from thee, and thy whoredom <02184> brought from the land <0776> of Egypt <04714>: so that thou shalt not lift up <05375> (8799) thine eyes <05869> unto them, nor remember <02142> (8799) Egypt <04714> any more.
28 For thus saith <0559> (8804) the Lord <0136> GOD <03069>; Behold, I will deliver <05414> (8802) thee into the hand <03027> of them whom thou hatest <08130> (8804), into the hand <03027> of them from whom thy mind <05315> is alienated <05361> (8804):
29 And they shall deal <06213> (8804) with thee hatefully <08135>, and shall take away <03947> (8804) all thy labour <03018>, and shall leave <05800> (8804) thee naked <05903> and bare <06181>: and the nakedness <06172> of thy whoredoms <02183> shall be discovered <01540> (8738), both thy lewdness <02154> and thy whoredoms <08457>.
30 I will do <06213> (8800) these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring <02181> (8800) after <0310> the heathen <01471>, and because thou art polluted <02930> (8738) with their idols <01544>.
31 Thou hast walked <01980> (8804) in the way <01870> of thy sister <0269>; therefore will I give <05414> (8804) her cup <03563> into thine hand <03027>.
32 Thus saith <0559> (8804) the Lord <0136> GOD <03069>; Thou shalt drink <08354> (8799) of thy sister’s <0269> cup <03563> deep <06013> and large <07342>: thou shalt be laughed to scorn <06712> and had in derision <03933>; it containeth <03557> (8687) much <04767>.
33 Thou shalt be filled <04390> (8735) with drunkenness <07943> and sorrow <03015>, with the cup <03563> of astonishment <08047> and desolation <08077>, with the cup <03563> of thy sister <0269> Samaria <08111>.
34 Thou shalt even drink <08354> (8804) it and suck it out <04680> (8804), and thou shalt break <01633> (8762) the sherds <02789> thereof, and pluck off <05423> (8762) thine own breasts <07699>: for I have spoken <01696> (8765) it, saith <05002> (8803) the Lord <0136> GOD <03069>.
35 Therefore thus saith <0559> (8804) the Lord <0136> GOD <03069>; Because thou hast forgotten <07911> (8804) me, and cast <07993> (8686) me behind <0310> thy back <01458>, therefore bear <05375> (8798) thou also thy lewdness <02154> and thy whoredoms <08457>.
36 The LORD <03068> said <0559> (8799) moreover unto me; Son <01121> of man <0120>, wilt thou judge <08199> (8799) Aholah <0170> and Aholibah <0172>? yea, declare <05046> (8685) unto them their abominations <08441>; {judge: or, plead for}
37 That they have committed adultery <05003> (8765), and blood <01818> is in their hands <03027>, and with their idols <01544> have they committed adultery <05003> (8765), and have also caused their sons <01121>, whom they bare <03205> (8804) unto me, to pass for them through <05674> (8689) the fire, to devour <0402> them.
38 Moreover this they have done <06213> (8804) unto me: they have defiled <02930> (8765) my sanctuary <04720> in the same day <03117>, and have profaned <02490> (8765) my sabbaths <07676>.
39 For when they had slain <07819> (8800) their children <01121> to their idols <01544>, then they came <0935> (8799) the same day <03117> into my sanctuary <04720> to profane <02490> (8763) it; and, lo, thus have they done <06213> (8804) in the midst <08432> of mine house <01004>.
40 And furthermore <0637>, that ye have sent <07971> (8799) for men <0582> to come <0935> (8802) from far <04801>, unto whom a messenger <04397> was sent <07971> (8803); and, lo, they came <0935> (8804): for whom thou didst wash <07364> (8804) thyself, paintedst <03583> (8804) thy eyes <05869>, and deckedst <05710> (8804) thyself with ornaments <05716>, {to come: Heb. coming}

Jeremiah 3:6-19

6 The LORD <03068> said <0559> (8799) also unto me in the days <03117> of Josiah <02977> the king <04428> , Hast thou seen <07200> (8804) that which backsliding <04878> Israel <03478> hath done <06213> (8804)? she is gone up <01980> (8802) upon every high <01364> mountain <02022> and under <08478> every green <07488> tree <06086> , and there hath played the harlot <02181> (8799).
7 And I said <0559> (8799) after <0310> she had done <06213> (8800) all these things, Turn <07725> (8799) thou unto me. But she returned <07725> (8804) not. And her treacherous <0901> sister <0269> Judah <03063> saw <07200> (8799) it.
8 And I saw <07200> (8799), when for all the causes <0182> whereby backsliding <04878> Israel <03478> committed adultery <05003> (8765) I had put her away <07971> (8765), and given <05414> (8799) her a bill <05612> of divorce <03748>; yet her treacherous <0898> (8802) sister <0269> Judah <03063> feared <03372> (8804) not, but went <03212> (8799) and played the harlot <02181> (8799) also.
9 And it came to pass through the lightness <06963> of her whoredom <02184>, that she defiled <02610> (8799) the land <0776>, and committed adultery <05003> (8799) with stones <068> and with stocks <06086>. {lightness: or, fame}
10 And yet for all this her treacherous <0901> sister <0269> Judah <03063> hath not turned <07725> (8804) unto me with her whole heart <03820>, but feignedly <08267>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>. {feignedly: Heb. in falsehood}
11 And the LORD <03068> said <0559> (8799) unto me, The backsliding <04878> Israel <03478> hath justified <06663> (8765) herself <05315> more than treacherous <0898> (8802) Judah <03063>.
12 Go <01980> (8800) and proclaim <07121> (8804) these words <01697> toward the north <06828>, and say <0559> (8804), Return <07725> (8798), thou backsliding <04878> Israel <03478>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>; and I will not cause mine anger <06440> to fall <05307> (8686) upon you: for I am merciful <02623>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>, and I will not keep <05201> (8799) anger for ever <05769>.
13 Only acknowledge <03045> (8798) thine iniquity <05771>, that thou hast transgressed <06586> (8804) against the LORD <03068> thy God <0430>, and hast scattered <06340> (8762) thy ways <01870> to the strangers <02114> (8801) under every green <07488> tree <06086>, and ye have not obeyed <08085> (8804) my voice <06963>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>.
14 Turn <07725> (8798), O backsliding <07726> children <01121>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>; for I am married <01166> (8804) unto you: and I will take <03947> (8804) you one <0259> of a city <05892>, and two <08147> of a family <04940>, and I will bring <0935> (8689) you to Zion <06726>:
15 And I will give <05414> (8804) you pastors <07462> (8802) according to mine heart <03820>, which shall feed <07462> (8804) you with knowledge <01844> and understanding <07919> (8687).
16 And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied <07235> (8799) and increased <06509> (8804) in the land <0776> , in those days <03117>, saith <05002> (8803) the LORD <03068>, they shall say <0559> (8799) no more, The ark <0727> of the covenant <01285> of the LORD <03068>: neither shall it come <05927> (8799) to mind <03820>: neither shall they remember <02142> (8799) it; neither shall they visit <06485> (8799) it; neither shall that be done <06213> (8735) any more. {come to mind: Heb. come upon the heart} {that…: or, it be magnified}
17 At that time <06256> they shall call <07121> (8799) Jerusalem <03389> the throne <03678> of the LORD <03068> ; and all the nations <01471> shall be gathered <06960> (8738) unto it, to the name <08034> of the LORD <03068>, to Jerusalem <03389>: neither shall they walk <03212> (8799) any more after <0310> the imagination <08307> of their evil <07451> heart <03820>. {imagination: or, stubbornness}
18 In those days <03117> the house <01004> of Judah <03063> shall walk <03212> (8799) with the house <01004> of Israel <03478>, and they shall come <0935> (8799) together <03162> out of the land <0776> of the north <06828> to the land <0776> that I have given for an inheritance <05157> (8689) unto your fathers <01>. {with: or, to} {given…: or, caused your fathers to possess}
19 But I said <0559> (8804), How shall I put <07896> (8799) thee among the children <01121>, and give <05414> (8799) thee a pleasant <02532> land <0776>, a goodly <06643> heritage <05159> of the hosts <06635> of nations <01471>? and I said <0559> (8799), Thou shalt call <07121> (8799) me, My father <01>; and shalt not turn away <07725> (8799) from me <0310>. {from me: Heb. from after me} {a goodly…: Heb. an heritage of glory, or, beauty} {pleasant…: Heb. land of desire}



The Split Was Manifested During the Reigns of Rehoboam and Jeroboam

The Northern Kingdom went into captivity to Assyria under Tiglath-pileser in 721 B.C.

The Southern Kingdom [Judah] succumbed to the Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar in 606 B.C. [115 years later]


Esdras

2 Esdras 13:40-45

40 Those are the ten tribes, which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land.
41 But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt,
42 That they might there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land.
43 And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow places of the river.
44 For the most High then shewed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over.
45 For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth.

Josephus: Nearly 800 years later, the Ten Northern Tribes [Israel] were still identifiable: Antiquities of the Jews: Page 698

So he read the epistle at Babylon to those Jews that were there; but he kept the epistle itself, and sent a copy of it to all those of his own nation that were in Media. And when these Jews had understood what piety the king had towards God, and what kindness he had for Esdras, they were all greatly pleased; nay, many of them took their effects with them, and came to Babylon, as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem; but then the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country; wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.

Page 1969

29
. By this terrible and perfectly unparalleled slaughter of five hundred thousand men of the newly idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes, God’s high displeasure and indignation against that idolatry and rebellion fully appeared; the remainder were thereby seriously cautioned not to persist in them, and a kind of balance or equilibrium was made between the ten and the two tribes for the time to come; while otherwise the perpetually idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes would naturally have been too powerful for the two tribes, which were pretty frequently free both from such idolatry and rebellion; nor is there any reason to doubt of the truth of the prodigious number upmost: signal an occasion.

The Burial Place of the Ten Lost Tribes became the Birth Place of the Scythians. At the precise time of the demise of the Ten Lost tribes, suddenly the Scythian hordes appear. The Scots, Celts, and Saxons trace their ancestry back to the Scythians and even beyond.


St Paul’s Cathedral   [Illustration]




The Behistun Inscriptions:

Behistun Inscription or Bisutun Inscription - cuneiform text, the decipherment of which was the key to all cuneiform script and opened to scholars the study of the written works of ancient Mesopotamia. The inscription in Old Persian, in Susian (the Iranian language of Elam), and in Assyrian is chiseled on the face of a mountainous rock c.300 ft (90 m) above the ground at Behistun, Persia (modern W Iran). A bas-relief depicting Darius I with a group of captive chiefs is carved together with the inscription. Although the rock was known in ancient times (Diodorus attributed the carvings to Semiramis), it was not until 1835 that Sir Henry Rawlinson scaled it and copied the inscriptions. Rawlinson translated the Persian section of the inscription, which later led to the entire decipherment of the Assyrian text.

Behistun Rock is one of the keys to finding the Lost Tribes. The crux is knowing the names used to identify those people. With the trilingual inscription of Behistun Rock we discover what three other cultures called the Ten Tribes. And it wasn't Israelites. Behistun Rock is found in the Zargos mountains, in northwestern Iran, on an old caravan road that runs from Babylon to Ecbatana, the ancient capitol of Media. The mountain is 1700 feet high and on the sheer face, 300 feet above the base is a huge bas relief commissioned by Darius the Great in 515 BC as a grandiose Ode to his great accomplishments. Listed are the nations and peoples he conquered and ruled as the king of the Medo-Persian empire. The picture is accompanied by many large panels which are inscribed with three languages. The size of the whole monument is larger than half a football field; 100 feet high, 150 feet wide. One example of the quality of workmanship that went into the monument is the preparation of the sufaces. Where loose rocks and cracks were found, hot lead was added as a stabilizer or fill. At 300 plus feet! ! Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, shown working on a ladder in the sketch below, is mainly responsible for the decipherment of the inscriptions. It's interesting that Rawlison accomplished the feat of scaling the rock face while copying the inscriptions, and in 1840 deciphering the texts, all by the age of thirty! The text contains many references that link Darius' subjects with the Israelites. The name "Kana", which is Canaan, appears 28 times. We also have a man named "Sarocus the Sacan who wears a hebrew hat. Included in the nations listed is the Sakka. The term Sakka in Persian and Elamite becomes Gimri in Babylonian. Let me add here that Assyrian and Babylonian are virtually the same. We'll be hearing a lot more from the Gimri when we look at the Assyrian Tablets evidence. In the picture we see King Darius facing nine captives, which are secured by the neck with a rope. A tenth is under the King's foot. Each of these men is differently dressed. Across the bottom and up one side are many panels containing the story of Darius' conquests. There is also a large section of supplementary text.

The Behistun Rock inscriptions are confirmed in two other places: Darius' tomb, and a gold tablet. The gold tablet again mentions the conquering of the Sakka, while the tomb inscription expands the evidence by talking about three different kinds of Sakka. In all cases, the same name in Babylonian was Gimri.

I'll skip ahead a bit to tell you that the Sakka comes from Isaac and becomes Saxon. Gimri comes from Khumri(out of the Biblical name Omri) and goes through Gimmira and the Greek Kimmerioi to Cimmerian.

We'll find that almost all those names we learned in European history are traceable to the Sakka, Gimri and Scythians.

Behistun Rock   [Ilustration]

It's interesting to note that while Darius was putting down insurrection among the Israelites, he was assisting the Jews with the rebuilding of the Temple.

Behistun Rock is one of the keys to finding the Lost Tribes. The crux is knowing the names used to identify those people. With the trilingual inscription of Behistun Rock we discover what three other cultures called the Ten Tribes. And it wasn't Israelites. Behistun Rock is found in the Zargos mountains, in northwestern Iran, on an old caravan road that runs from Babylon to Ecbatana, the ancient capitol of Media. The mountain is 1700 feet high and on the sheer face, 300 feet above the base is a huge bas relief commissioned by Darius the Great in 515 BC as a grandiose Ode to his great accomplishments. Listed are the nations and peoples he conquered and ruled as the king of the Medo-Persian empire. The picture is accompanied by many large panels which are inscribed with three languages. The size of the whole monument is larger than half a football field; 100 feet high, 150 feet wide. One example of the quality of workmanship that went into the monument is the preparation of the sufaces. Where loose rocks and cracks were found, hot lead was added as a stabilizer or fill. At 300 plus feet! ! Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, shown working on a ladder in the sketch below, is mainly responsible for the decipherment of the inscriptions. It's interesting that Rawlison accomplished the feat of scaling the rock face while copying the inscriptions, and in 1840 deciphering the texts, all by the age of thirty! The text contains many references that link Darius' subjects with the Israelites. The name "Kana", which is Canaan, appears 28 times. We also have a man named "Sarocus the Sacan who wears a hebrew hat. Included in the nations listed is the Sakka. The term Sakka in Persian and Elamite becomes Gimri in Babylonian. Let me add here that Assyrian and Babylonian are virtually the same. We'll be hearing a lot more from the Gimri when we look at the Assyrian Tablets evidence.

In the picture we see King Darius facing nine captives, which are secured by the neck with a rope. A tenth is under the King's foot. Each of these men is differently dressed. Across the bottom and up one side are many panels containing the story of Darius' conquests. There is also a large section of supplementary text.

The Behistun Rock inscriptions are confirmed in two other places: Darius' tomb, and a gold tablet. The gold tablet again mentions the conquering of the Sakka, while the tomb inscription expands the evidence by talking about three different kinds of Sakka. In all cases, the same name in Babylonian was Gimri.

I'll skip ahead a bit to tell you that the Sakka comes from Isaac and becomes Saxon. Gimri comes from Khumri(out of the Biblical name Omri) and goes through Gimmira and the Greek Kimmerioi to Cimmerian.

We'll find that almost all those names we learned in European history are traceable to the Sakka, Gimri and Scythians.

Behistun Rock

It's interesting to note that while Darius was putting down insurrection among the Israelites, he was assisting the Jews with the rebuilding of the Temple.

The Behistun Inscription
The Persian Rosetta Stone   ['Illustration]

The following exempts give a fascinating account of the background and history behind this great monument.


The Rock of Behistun

by Dr Campbell Thompson (1937) who investigated the Rock of Behistun on behalf of the British Museum.

Introduction

(Page 761) Two of the most important events in the advancement of historical knowledge have been the discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptionson the Rock of Behistun. The former opened the door to the Wonderland of Egyptian history, and the latter brought daylight into the dark places of antiquity in the Middle East, revealing to the modern world the vanished civilizations of Mesopotamia in all the truth of contemporary record. The Rosetta Stone is the subject of another chapter of this work: here Dr. Campbell Thompson, who investigated the Rock of Behistun on behalf of the British Museum, tells its story. (Sir J. A. Hammerton, editor of the Wonders of the Past)

Text of the article

(Page 761) Two days' journey south-west from the ancient Summer Palace of Ecbatana, along the old caravan-road leading down to Babylon, a towering rock bastion nearly 4,000 feet high marks the end of one of the many great earth-folds of the crumpled Persian border. At its foot a spring wells out in a broad pool, and meanders across the rich, broad vale of the Karkhah, where the rains of spring are kindly and deck the plains with grass and the mountain crannies with flowers. Here, between scaur and well-head, where slow caravans have crawled the ages through, the well-worn track passes the sordid little village of Behistun. More than five hundred years B.C. the Great King, the king of Kings, the King of Persia, the King of the Provinces, Darius, took counsel where he should worthily grave the story of his reign. It must be set in a place which all should see, and yet be safe from the ravages of time and the malice of enemies; it must be written in several languages, that foreigners as well as Persians might know his glory; it must be shown in picture as well as in the written word, that those poor illiterates who could not read might yet tremble at the great king's vengeance. His choice fell on this rock-face at Behistun, a hundred feet and more above the pool, in a gully masked by the last crags. In 516 B.C. his scribes composed the great history in three languages, and in Persian, Susian, and Babylonish cuneiform the engravers chiselled it in thirteen columns in the smooth vertical surface, and then, above the five tall columns of Persian writing, twelve feet high, his artists carved a delicate panel with a life-sized figure of the king in relief, receiving the submission of ten rebel upstarts who had challenged his right to the throne.

In course of time the Achaemenid kingdom went the way of other Oriental monarchies, leaving the dumb witness of ruined cities, sculptures, and above all, this great rock-picture, safeguarded by its height above the road, to testify to a power long dead. Legends grew fast round such a marvel, and travellers carried away strange tales of its rugged scarps, inscribed with unknown writings. Diodorus, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, called it the "Bagistanon" mountain, the forerunner of its modern name, and told a wonderful tale how Semiramis, Queen of Babylon, ordered it to be carved, climbing the face of the (Page 763) mountain on a heap of pack saddles from her baggage train piled against the rock. The place was held sacred, said he; and to this day the Persian women come to hang their little votive scraps of rag on a bush beneath, as though it were some saint's tomb, in token of their dues to its mystery. Others who visited Persia in later times spoke of its wonder when they returned to Europe; many let their fancy run wild in their explanation of its meaning. Bembo in the seventeenth, Otter in the eighteenth century, tells of it; nay, Gardanne in 1809 avers that the picture is meant for the Twelve Apostles, and Ker Porter 1827, hardly less fanciful, thinks it to be Shalmaneser and the captive Tribes of Israel.

In 1835 Henry Rawlinson, a young English soldier, twenty-five years old, was sent as Assistant to the Governor of Kermanshah. His attention was turned to the cuneiform inscriptions at Elwend near Ecbatana, and, as a soldier whose scholarly side ill brooked long periods of boredom, he set himself to decipher the strange nknown tongue in which they were written. In his "Memoir" he says that he was aware that a German professor, Grotefend, about the beginning of the century, had deciphered some of the names of the early sovereigns of the house of Achaemenes, but in his isolated position at Kermanshah he could neither obtain a copy of the German's alphabet, nor discover which were the inscriptions that he (Page 764) had used. Actually Grotefend had made out the names of Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes from two short inscriptions accurately copied by Niebuhr at Persepolis in 1765, subsequently discovering the name of Cyrus, and from these he was able to assign correct values to about a third of the old Persian cuneiform alphabet, which consists of between forty and fifty characters. Closely after his labours must be reckoned those of Professor Lassen, who had deciphered about six more characters by 1836, and the names Tychsen, Munter, Burnouf, Rask, Beer, Jacquet, and Saint Martin must be accorded full title to their share in the decipherment of the inscriptions.

None of the work of these scholars had as yet reached the young Englishman, who applied himself to the task of decipherment unaided. There was no Rosetta Stone to give the translation of the strange characters; nothing but the unyielding problem of unknown names. Unconsciously he followed the method which Grotefend had employed. He compared two inscriptions, in this case at Elwend, which had been set up side by side, and found that they were identically the same except in two short passages of a few characters each. But t e first of these two groups in the first inscription coincided with the second group in the second inscription, and Rawlinson's genius suggested, first, that these groups must be the names of kings concerned in setting up the inscriptions and second, if so, the first name in the first inscription must represent the father of the king who set up the second. He was right. He took the names of the three most famous Persian kings in history, Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes, applied them to his theory, and found that the values for the characters which their names provided stood the test wherever the same characters reappeared in the names. The threshold was crossed.

But although Rawlinson, as well as foreign scholars, had so brilliantly deciphered the value of some of the characters, the names of some of the kings, and even of countries mentioned in the text, the meaning of the inscriptions and the language in which they were couched were still a sealed book.

The Englishman had long been attracted by the problem of the Behistun inscription, and during his sojourn in Persia he set himself to unravel its meaning. By the end of 1837 he had so far overcome the difficulties involved in scaling the rock-face and copying the cuneiform text, that he had completed a version of about half of the Persian text, and in this year he forwarded to the Royal Asiatic Society, which has always shown a deep appreciation of scholarship of this nature, a translation of the two first paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, recording the titles and genealogy of Darius. Unfortunately he was compelled to break into his studies by his being transferred from "the lettered seclusion of Bagdad to fill a responsible and laborious office in Afghanistan," but 1843 again found him in the City of the Caliphs, eager to continue his labours. For many years past he applied himself to Zend, the oldest Pers an dialect known, and it was his application of this language to the Persian cuneiform inscriptions which brought about his extraordinary exploit of translating the whole of the Persian inscription of Behistun for the first time. His decipherment of the characters which composed the proper names allowed him first to transliterate the inscription and so know how the words sounded, and his genius for languages then led him to their correct affinities with other dialects. His "Memoir," giving a complete translation with notes was published in 1846.

Lassen, however, must not be forgotten in according the due meed of praise to the pioneers of translation as well as decipherment, for he, too (independently, but simultaneously with Rawlinson), applied himself to the Persepolitan inscriptions with definitely satisfactory results, publishing his rendering of them in 1844.

Rawlinson was not content only with the Persian part of the inscription. In 1844 he once more, this time with two companions, climbed the rock, crossed the chasm between the Persian and Susian columns, and copied the Susian version. Again in 1847 he hoped to attack the Babylonian version, which is cut on two faces of a ponderous verhanging boulder above the sheer face of the Susian columns. To this he did not himself climb, but found a Kurdish boy who scaled the height from a flank, and in a swinging seat took squeezes under Rawlinson's direction. With the Persian version now thoroughly understood, it was only a matter of time to elucidate the Susian and the Babylonian. The former yielded to the energy of Hinks, Westergaard, de Saulcy, and particularly Norris; the latter to Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert and Fox Talbot, who showed that the Babylonian was a Semitic language allied to Hebrew. The great problem of cuneiform had been solved.

Subsequently Professor Williams Jackson in 1903 visited the inscription, and, climbing to the Persian ledge, re-examined the lower part this text. But by this time the squeezes which Rawlinson had made of the inscription and stored in the British Museum were decaying, and particularly the Babylonian version, read thus from squeezes, was probably capable of considerable improvement. It was obvious that any advance in our knowledge of text, Persian, Susian and Babylonian, must be made by a collation of the Rock itself, and in 1904 the Trustees of the British Museum decided to send an expedition down to the Rock.

To this end Dr. L. W. King, and I as his junior, left for Mosul in April, 1904, for Behistun. On our arrival there our first view of the inscription suggested that it must first be attacked from behind, and a spot was found two hundred feet above the sculpture, whence we could shake down two ropes until they reached its face. Then, after scaling the rock from below to the ledge of the base of the inscription, we were able to tie two cradles to these ropes, adding lengths of stouter rope wherewith we might climb into them. The first part of the ascent from below was an almost perpendicular scramble of 12 feet or so, with handholds on tufts of grass, and footholds on soil or projecting stone; thence upward, in a gentle ascent to the right, the line of approach lay along the smooth rock, broken only by one gap with a sheer long drop to earth beneath. From here the way up was comparatively easy to the right-hand side of the Persian inscription. After we had evolved this route together, happily without native help, pegs and a rope-rail were fastened along it, making the daily climb a trivial matter.
 
Rawlinson, "Archaeologia," xxxiv., 1853, 74, says: "Notwithstanding that a French antiquarian commission in Persia described it a few years back to be impossible to copy the Behistun inscriptions, I certainly do not consider it any great feat in climbing to ascend to the spot where (Page 766) the inscriptions occur. When I was living at Kermanshah fifteen years ago, and was somewhat more active than I am at present, I used frequently to scale the rock three or four times a day without the aid of a rope or ladder: without any assistance, in fact, whatever. During my late visits I have found it more convenient to ascend and descend by the help of ropes where the track lies up a precipitate cleft, and to throw a plank over those chasms where a false step in leaping across would probably be fatal." The Babylonian overhang, however, he did not copy himself but, as is mentioned above, sent a Kurdish boy up to take squeezes. "The craigsmen of the place . . . . . declared the particular block inscribed with the Babylonian legend to be unapproachable."
 
Beneath the fifth Persian column was a ledge of some six feet which narrowed almost to nothing near the first column, beyond which, on a salient face, were the three columns of the Susian, of the same height as the Persian, but across a chasm, of which Rawlinson had spoken. In front of these, too, was a ledge, which we found could be easily reached by swinging across on our ropes. The Babylonian, written on an overhanging boulder twelve feet above this, was a more difficult problem. From a vantage-point high above the inscription our men could raise or lower the cradles to the right height on the face of the inscription, or to the sculpture above the Persian columns; after they had made fast the ends above, we climbed into the cradles and thus sat, collating and photographing the inscriptions and sculptures for the next sixteen days. We were able to reach and collate the Babylonian overhang by swinging across to the Susian ledge and then climbing the ropes to a ledge above the Susian, and thence, again sitting in the cradles, working our way round the inscribed face of the boulder by hands or knees. The great sculpture was photographed with a hand camera either from here at an angle, or piecemeal direct at five feet distance by pushing the cradles away from the rock with our feet. The results were published by the Trustee "The Inscription of Darius the Great at Behistun," where full details and photographs will be found.

Throughout, what was most striking was great accuracy of Rawlinson's copies. The Persian columns alone contain more than fifteen thousand characters, and his work showed surprisingly few errors, considering the difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend.
 
The inscription itself tells the ancient glory of Persia at its zenith, before Darius had challenged (Page 767) the Greeks and had been defeated in 490 at Marathon. It begins with the genealogy of Darius, traced direct to Achaemenes, and then refers to the reign of Cambyses, who had preceded Darius, the murder of Smerdis (the brother of Cambyses), and the revolt of the Persians during the absence of Cambyses on his campaign in Egypt. At this moment Gaumata, the Magian, seizing his opportunity, declared himself to be Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, with a claim to the throne. Cambyses hastened homewards, but died on the way, and Gaumata, as the Babylonian contract tablets show, held sway for a brief period.

It was Darius, the son of Hystaspes, who challenged the usurper, and, marching against him with a small force, slew him and took the throne. But revolts broke out in many of the provinces, and the first years of Darius were spent in subduing them. Nidintu-Bel seized Babylon, claiming to be Nebuchadnezzar; Martiya headed a revolution in Susiana: in Media Phraortes gave himself out to be Khshathritha, of the family of Cyaxares, and led another revolt. These were dealt with successfully, and the unfortunate pretenders are to be seen with several others, equally unsuccessful, on the sculptured panel above the inscription. The king stands with his arm raised and his foot on Gaumata; behind him are his generals or satraps. Before him, roped one to another, come the recalcitrant chiefs in the following order: Atrina, the first Susian pretender; Nidintu-Bel, of Babylon; Fravartish (Phraortes), of Media; Martiza, the second Susian pretender; Citrantakhma, of Sagartia; Vahyazdata, the second pseudo-Smerdis; Arakha, the second Babylonian pretender; Frada, of Margiana; and subsequently, at the cost of destroying part of the Susian inscription, Skunkha, the Scythian, in his high peaked hat was added.

It is a nice point whether the inscription is a finer memorial to the Persian, Darius, who wrote it, or to the Englishman, Rawlinson, who deciphered it.

Thompson, R. Campbell. "The Rock of Behistun". Wonders of the Past. Edited by Sir J. A. Hammerton. Vol. II. New York: Wise and Co., 1937. (p. 760-767)
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Darius Carved History on Ageless Rock

 (1950): by George G. Cameron who was the chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.

(Page 825) In the imperishable stone of a 4,000-foot Iranian mountain, artisans of Darius the Great carved his vainglorious autobiography almost 2,500 years ago. The achievements of this king of ancient Persia (now Iran) they extolled in three different languages of his realm. This gigantic cliffside boast became, like Egypt's famed Rosetta Stone. a major key to an understanding of long-forgotten languages and the cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, scripts in which they were written. Nevertheless, despite numerous attempts to secure a perfect copy of this important document, there remained to our day tremendous gaps in our knowledge of its wording and thus a failure to appreciate its magnitude. By use of 20th-century tools to gain access to the monument, and modern techniques of field archeology to obtain a more accurate record, I was able to achieve what men had long desired: a better, fuller copy, and hence a greater understanding of the Persian's noble monument.

Darius could have found no better or more conspicuous place for his project than the last peak of a long, narrow range which skirts the plain of modern Kermanshah. At the foot of the mountain springs bubble up into a pool of crystal-clear water and supply a small stream, which flows past the village of Bisitun and away into the plain. From time immemorial caravans have watered their beasts at these springs. Here every army which has marched from Iran into Iraq has camped, for the mountain and its springs lie on the age-old caravan trail between Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), once a center of the Medes and Persians, and fabled Babylon. To the ancients themselves the spot was called it the "Place of God," Baga-stana, or Bisitun. The monument was not unearned, for Darius became king in 522 B.C. only after a series of bloody pitched battles with nine other contenders to the throne. It was carved so the whole world might be informed of his prowess and of his debt to his god, the "Wise Lord" Ahuramazda.

A part of the story is told by a massive relief cut into the limestone mountain 340 feet above the springs and 100 feet above the highest part of the mountain to which man can climb. There today stands Darius, with high brow and straight nose. On his head rests the Persian war crown, carved with exquisite care to resemble the gold band studded with oval jewels and rosettes worn by the Great King himself. Behind him appear two of his officers, the bearers of his bow and lance. Before him floats the winged figure of the god Ahuramazda, who taught Darius to speak the truth and whose left hand grasps the ring which bestows sovereignty on monarchs. Beneath the god stand eight rival contenders, their necks roped together, their hands tied behind their backs; a ninth, the archenemy, lies prostrate under the king's left foot, his own knees and hands lifted in agony. A tenth and subsequent foe was pictured a few years later.

The relief alone was inadequate for Darius. He also commanded that the story be carved in three languages of the empire: Old Persian, the language of the king and court, inscribed beneath the relief in four and a half columns of closely written texts; in Babylonian, inscribed on two faces of a rock jutting out from the mountainside to the left of the relief; and, to the right of the sculptured panel, in Elamite, the language then spoken at Shush, or Susa ("the palace" of the Biblical book of Esther). Somewhat later, the Elamite inscription was recopied to the left of the relief.

So inaccessible was the Great King's handiwork that even the citizens of his empire soon forgot the story that was told. Worse still, as hundreds of years rolled by and the languages spoken in his day were succeeded by others, men even lost the ability to understand these tongues or to read the cuneiform scripts in which they were written. But within the last century Darius's lordly monument itself provided the key by which the riddle of these languages and their scripts was solved.

The story of decipherment began when travelers compared the curious wedge-shaped signs at Bisitun with those appearing on other, more accessible monuments in old Turkey and Persia. Sometimes they brought back copies or even samples of these "writings" to Europe, but no man there could read them. By inference, one of the languages with its system of writing was thought to be of Persian origin, for it was very common within Persia, particularly at Darius's former capital, Persepolis. Another was assumed to be Babylonian, for its script closely resembled the writing on monuments found in what is now the country of Iraq, in the "Garden of Eden"-the land of the Two Rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. The third was totally unknown.

The initial step in decipherment was made by a German, Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who chose two short but supposedly Old Persian inscriptions and painstakingly compared them, sign by sign. When, in 1815, he published his results, it was all but obvious that he had succeeded in finding the key to the understanding of these particular inscriptions. But the material at hand for full decipherment was wholly inadequate. No long text was available to check his discoveries. Also, he had investigated only one of the three languages. Since all other inscriptions copied up to that time were too short and limited, it proved impossible to use his probable decipherment of the one language as a key to the understanding of the other two. The inscription on Mount Bisitun gave greatest promise. Here, as we now know, are 515 lines of texts in Old Persian, 141 long lines in Babylonian, and 650 lines in Elamite. Bisitun, therefore, represented a challenge which man must meet and overcome if he would seek the hidden meanings of cuneiform writings.

The first attempt to copy Darius's story was made a little more than a century ago when two Frenchmen sailed from Toulon at the behest of their government and with the support of the two most famous French Academies. They had wonderful experiences; they scrambled with bleeding hands and feet up the rock they had been sent to copy, and regained terra firma by an effort of gymnastics which, to hear them tell it, could be equaled only by the lizard. Their toil and peril here were fruitless, however. In the end, they failed in (Page 832) their purpose because, they said, the inscription was inaccessible.

Unknown to the two Frenchmen, an Englishman, Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, had already succeeded in climbing the precipitous face of Bisitun. His description of the ascent is often hair-raising. He concluded that the climb is one which only an enthusiastic antiquarian could be expected to undertake. However, he was no mere mountain climber. Laboriously, and with infinite patience, he copied the Old Persian text and then set about to decipher it. Repeatedly he returned to the Rock to obtain copies of both the Elamite and the Babylonian inscriptions, upon which he also bent his effort and ingenuity. With his publication of the copies and translation of the Old Persian texts in 1847, and of the Babylonian texts in 1851, the long-sought key to the understanding of the world's oldest writings was made available to all mankind. The challenge of Bisitun had been met and overcome.

But the elements have exacted a heavy toll from the ancient inscriptions. The winds and sands of time, autumn rains, and winter's chill have played havoc with line after line of the texts and made them difficult to read. (Page 833) Further, despite his monumental achievement, Rawlinson was engaged in making the first copy, and in the earliest stages of decipherment, when often he had no way of knowing what to look for. His copy, naturally, was defective. More than that: although he copied nine and a half columns of texts, four additional columns containing 323 lines defied him, for underneath these four columns there is no ledge on which a man can stand.

In an effort to clarify some of the more dubious or difficult readings of the Old Persian text, an eminent American professor at Columbia University, A. V. Williams Jackson, climbed the Rock in 1903. He checked or collated many passages and secured photographs of the inscriptions for the first time. But the full story of Bisitun had not yet been told.

So again, in 1904, an expedition sponsored by the British Museum set out for Bisitun. Since Leonard William King and Reginald Campbell Thompson, who labored for the Museum, could profit from more than a generation of good scholarship in the ability to read and understand ancient writings, it was only to be expected that they should improve enormously on Rawlinson's readings. Also, by a fortunate discovery, they were enabled to use a rock shelf high up the mountainside, thus coming closer to the inscriptions they sought to recopy. Where Rawlinson had been forced to stand upon a tiny ledge immediately beneath the texts, they dropped a rope from the shelf above and, sitting in a kind of boatswain's chair, swung back and forth across the face of the vertical Rock. Carefully they reworked the nine and a half columns that Rawlinson had copied. Their success is indicated by the fact that theirs is today the standard publication. The last secrets of Bisitun, it would seem, had been solved.

Yet they, too, made mistakes. They were unable to read the signs in innumerable passages, and they made a number of surely erroneous or impossible restorations. The fault was by no means wholly theirs, for any three men reading a worn and eroded inscription may interpret it in three, if not more, differing ways. A succeeding generation of scholars had advanced suggestions and reccomendations which needed to be checked, by improved archeological techniques, against the original inscription upon the fabulous Rock.

Other problems likewise called for a solution. Would a closer examination of the enormous relief which accompanied the inscriptions reveal any new details of Persian art? And how had Darius's workmen succeeded in carving the relief and the lengthy texts high up a mountainside on a spot which is today all but inaccessible? A final question involved the four columns of inscriptions which had defied the efforts not only of Rawlinson but also of King and Thompson. If these columns could be read, what secrets would they tell? Some hitherto unknown detail of Darius's attack on Greece, or some unpolished facet of the religion of these one-god-worshiping Achaemenid Persians? Yet no man even knew the language in which these four columns were written.

All these things I knew when, in March of 1948, I was named Annual Professor of the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research, an institution whose corporate members are the outstanding universities, colleges, theological seminaries, and rabbinical schools in America. Because of the international situation in 1948, it appeared unlikely that the Annual Professor would be able to make any substantial contribution to the work of the schools within Iraq. I proposed, therefore, an expedition to the Rock of Bisitun, an expedition which would attempt to solve some, if not all, of the problems I have outlined and thus bring to an end more than a century of work upon this truly historic monument.

Within a few months I reached Kermanshah, (Page 835) which was to be our base of operation. My wife and two sons accompanied me. Five miles northeast, at Taq-i-Bustan, are the remains of a walled park or "paradise" used by kings of Sassanid Persia 1,500 years ago. Carved in the mountain walls near by are two grottoes and a bas-relief illustrating hunting and other scenes from the lives of the same Persian sovereigns.

Modern methods of transportation and communication had doomed the town to moribundity, but with the discovery of Iran's natural underground wealth, oil, and the establishment here of a refinery, Kermanshah has blossomed into new life and vigor. Now its dusty streets, some even paved, teem with surging groups of Kurds and Persians; buses, trucks, and private cars vie for honors with horses, camels, donkeys, and the heavily laden human back. An American hospital helps to serve the major medical needs of the growing city, and with its directors, Dr. and Mrs. Russell Bussdicker, we found friendly lodging.

First stop was the office of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's very cooperative local manager, who assured us that the skill and methods of 20th-century oil engineers would be at the service of the linguist's learning and the archeologist's desire. Guided by shepherd boys around the rear of massive Bisitun, his experienced riggers ascended to the shelf 200 feet above the inscription; there they drove holes into the solid rock, placed steel pins in the holes, and cemented them in. Now we were ready for a frontal attack on the remaining secrets of Darius's noble memorial.

Carefully we dragged a scaffolding up the mountainside as high as man can climb, to a comparatively level spot beneath the inscriptions. Again we went behind the mountain, climbed to the now familiar shelf, lowered ropes to the base of the massif, and one (Page 836) by one pulled up the ends of two cables. These we anchored solidly to the pins already in place. Then we returned to our scaffolding and attached it to the cables. As we looked up, however, we saw that it was going to be no easy matter to raise and lower the scaffolding daily over the face of the mountain. Tremendous outjutting and overhanging rocks would certainly interfere with our upward or downward progress. Thirty feet above our heads was a little shelf. If we could leave our scaffolding near that shelf at the end of each day's work and descend the rest of the way by ladder, our task would be easier. So we placed a long ladder to reach this shelf against the rock wall. Now, in truth, we were ready.

Up to this point we had had a large crowd of sight-seers and willing native workmen. Three only were needed upon the scaffolding, one to man each of the two winches, and one to fend it off from the rocky wall. I would be one of the workmen, and so only two others were required. I turned to two men who had appeared to be most competent. "Will you come up top with me?" In unison they replied, "Not us!" "Why not?" I asked. "Too dangerous," replied these Kurdish villagers, who have long been noted for their headstrong daring! Shocked, I asked for volunteers, offered prize money, and had for answer only low negative murmurs. My project faced disaster if these men failed me! Finally, one of the riggers, on loan to me for this day only, stepped forward and, following him, a slight lad, named "Servant of Ali." Here were my workmen for this day; perhaps tomorrow would take care of itself.

Ours was a hard task, for time after time one or both of the winches were jammed up into the numerous overhanging rocks. But little by little we raised our scaffolding higher and higher; we fought not only the outjutting boulders and our own weight on the scaffold, but also the weight of dozens of men clinging down below to ropes by which they too were trying to hold our (Page 837) platform away from the mountain's face.

We passed the little shelf 30 feet above them, against which our ladder rested; we passed an oblique gash, the significance of which at first escaped us; and we passed solid rock scarped by thousands of chisels. At long last our scaffolding rested securely on the ledge immediately beneath the inscription, which now, for the first time, my hands and eyes caressed.

It was a triumphant moment. All past worries, over the arrival of the materials and the feasibility of my method of attack, disappeared. All obstacles, including the mountain itself, had been overcome. Nothing remained but to apply a new technique of copying inscriptions and the knowledge gained from 20 years of study to the age-old memorial. The expedition, I knew in that moment, would succeed.

Our first day's work ended on this note. As we prepared to descend, I realized the meaning of the oblique gash which we had passed on our ascent, and which we could now see slanting sharply downward just below us. It was an ancient pathway, now partially blocked by fallen rocks. We left our scaffolding where it was and followed the path down. Forty-eight feet of it still remained. Then the path ended, in scarped rock, still almost 50 feet above the watchers below. Five feet below its end, however, there was a little semicircular platform about 9 feet long and from 18 inches to 5 feet in width. We dropped to this platform and looked down again. There, 12 feet beneath us, was the top of our ladder, just resting against the edge of a tiny triangular shelf.

Cautiously we lowered ourselves once more, our hands and feet seeking purchase in a fissure which ran down to the shelf below. Our bodies were taut as, one by one, we gained the shelf and descended the ladder. Difficult and dangerous though this method of descent and ascent might be, here was our easiest way of access to the inscriptions. From that time on, we knew, ropes could help our progress up to the scaffolding, which itself would be used only as our platform at the height of the inscription and relief.

Our first day's work was done, but I needed a workman to replace the company's rigger. Once again I asked for volunteers, this time for the morrow. Encouraged by our day's success, a young boy ranged himself behind Servant of Ali. (Page 838) "What is your name?" I asked. "Hussein," was his reply. The humor of the situation struck me at once. There are two patron "saints" to the Persian Moslems. Their names? Ali and Hussein! For three days these boys worked with me upon the scaffolding, but unfortunately Abdul Ali soon found other interests. When I tried to replace him, again my pleas for assistance, regardless of the wages offered, fell on deaf ears. The work was still "too dangerous." In these straits my son Thomas, not yet 15 years old but eager to contribute to the project, volunteered. From that day on, the Persian Hussein, Tom, and I worked from the scaffolding, made our copies, and fought the winds, rain, and cold that all too soon began to interfere.

A major goal was to recheck all previous readings of the copy of Darius's story which is written in Old Persian. This is carved directly beneath the relief in five vertical columns, each of which, except for the last, measures about 12 feet high. At first sight, this portion of the monument appeared to be infinitely more unreadable than it had been more than 100 years ago when Rawlinson copied it, and even more damaged than when King and Thompson worked upon it. A horizontal fissure above the columns, but beneath the relief, was obviously responsible for part of the damage, for this was actually the exit of an underground "river." After a rain lasting less than seven hours, for instance, water issued from the fissure and washed down across the face of the inscription for more than 52 hours. Since the rock itself was limestone, centuries of tumbling water had eaten it away to a depth at times of five or six inches - and of course all the writing upon such spots is now gone.

But all inscriptions beneath its path had not disappeared. Although the water has dissolved the limestone at the top of each column, that limestone has itself been deposited, upon the face of the inscription, lower down! Where once there had been wedges or signs carved into the rock, signs long thought to be destroyed, there was now a solid deposit of rock. This was not "destruction" at all, but preservation! It was a stalactite (geologically speaking, a (Page 840) tufaceous) formation over the surface of the original inscription.

We were in a position somehow to "erase" this sedimentary deposit, but how were we to remove it without damaging the signs beneath it? Acid was certainly not the solution. Acid would eat away not only the deposit left in each cut wedge, but also the solid rock itself. A hammer and plain water was our answer. By delicate hammering through the surface deposit I could reach the original rock surface. Then I could rub a moistened cloth across the face of the invisible wedges. As the water evaporated, there was a difference in coloration between the original rock and the filled-in wedges. Sign after sign, word after word, thus became evident!

Sometimes our problems were solved in a disconcerting manner. For instance, there was a phrase in one line which for two generations had been the subject of debate among scholars. It was quite clear that Darius was saying something about one of his henchmen, but no one had been able to read it. When the passage came clear in our work, we were reminded only of the "vanishing Yehudi, the little man who wasn't there." For Darius merely says, "At that time my servant was not there at that place"! Thus some gains are in reality small or insignificant.

Others, however, contribute more to our knowledge, such as a new reading in which the King declares, "Now do you believe what I have done, [even] this [story]; to the people tell it, do not conceal it." This passage, also long fought over by orientalists, intrigued us much, for we were indeed endeavoring to carry out Darius's wishes.

The way rocks might fall from the cliffside was indicated when, one day, Hussein was sent to the shelf high above, while I remained upon the ledge. At a given signal he was to swing the cable over a projecting rock, and I was to do the same on the ledge below. The signal was given, we swung in unison, and I heard a sinister rumble above me, that of a falling boulder. For me upon the ledge, as for my wife and sons below, there was no shelter. I gave a cry of urgent warning and flattened myself against the face of the inscription. The large boulder hurtled by, hit the ledge, and seemed to explode. All of us were struck by some of the tiny fragments; but the overwhelming relief that flooded us, as hurriedly each responded to the other's call, can well be imagined. We never tried to move the cables in just that way again.

The ledge beneath the Old Persian version varies in breadth from 5 to 6 feet; to the left it continues beneath the Babylonian and the second Elamite copies, although it is not quite so broad. To the right of the Old Persian text there is at present no ledge whatsoever. Above this portion of the monument at the height of the sculptured panel, are the four columns of texts never before copied, and of which not even the language was known. Carefully, from the shelf above, we adjusted the positions of our cables and then, returning to the now familiar ledge, raised the scaffolding so that it stood in front of a part of this hitherto unknown text What would it tell us?

First glance showed that this text was frightfully weathered, damaged in part beyond recovery. Yet here and there signs came clear, and they were Elamite signs. I began to read, "And Darius the king says: a man named Phraortes . . ." and realized that the text was duplicating what, in a much better state of preservation, appeared beneath the Babylonian version below and to the left of the relief! We moved from the first to the second column, from the second to the third, and continued to read in Elamite. Finally we moved to column four - and there was no change in language or in phraseology; sign after sign, word after word, this text was a duplicate of the other well-known Elamite inscription!

P>Naturally, I was disappointed, for my hope of finding a new inscription of Darius was gone. Still, there was certain gain: by determining what was here written, we had unlocked a door that, until opened, would always be tantalizing. Furthermore, by copying this text also we could unquestionably improve the reading of the known Elamite text which had been copied by others and which was still to be secured by us.

Our copying technique involved photography, our eyes and hands, and a latex solution. Photographs were easily made from the scaffolding. On paper my hands copied what my eyes could see. With the latex compound, however, we were able to make molds which any scholar could read and trust, and which reproduced every sign as it was made by the ancient sculptors, or, rather, as it appears today. We first cleaned the rock surface with soft (Page 841) brushes, then applied successive coats of the liquid. The first, very thin, dried within 10 or 15 minutes. Over a second coat we laid thin strips of gauze and painted this again with a third coat, which was dry in less than an hour. Upon a thicker, fourth coat, to give body to our mold, we laid strips of burlap bags or sacking, which we then painted for the fifth and last time. After 24 hours we loosened the edges, peeled our mold from the rock, rolled it up, and carefully lowered it to the ground.

This hitherto uncopied text extends for 22 feet across the face of Bisitun. Our scaffolding measured but 16 feet long, but three feet in from each of its ends was the winch by which the platform could be raised or lowered. Necessarily, then, we often found ourselves working on one of the outside ends, beyond the winches, where there was no guardrail. The position was not automatically dangerous, except when we reached out beyond the end itself, although we were always fully aware that a slight slip would project us onto the rocks far below. One day, as Tom and I were so engaged, he pulled me back just in time and made the soothing and quite truthful remark, "Dad, if you fall, I'll never speak to you again!"

Down below us, as frequent glances assured us, were my wife Frances and son Douglas, who daily rode with us from Kermanshah in our jeep. Promptly at noon each day, Hussein, Tom, and I descended the path and ladder to eat a family lunch with them on the mountainside; otherwise, they watched and waited hopefully for the safe and successful ending of each day's work. They cut our rolls of gauze and bags of burlap into thin strips for easy application, and tied them to ropes by which they could be pulled up to the scaffolding. Later, for the gauze, we substituted woven native cloth which could be bought in the colorful bazaar of Kermanshah.

(Page 842) Each of us was heavily laden as morning after morning we trudged up the mountainside and climbed over massive rocks to reach the foot of the ladder. We carried up Mount Bisitun water, latex, brushes, food, extra clothing and blankets, as well as a dangerously fragile but important bottle of concentrated ammonia for thinning the latex solution.

Occasionally, as the wind shifted, it wafted to our nostrils a delicate perfume from tiny clusters of mountain flowers wedged in shallow crevices high up the spongelike rock. Sometimes we interrupted our lunch or labor to watch the antics of foot-long lizards clinging to the vertical rocks, or to observe the startled birds into whose nesting places, in crags around the sculptures, we were intruding.

Even more interesting was the pageant that unrolled below us, where the road wound along the foot of the mountain and twisted and turned through the plain. There we could see the tea and coffee houses, police post, and school groups around the life-giving springs whose waters nourished a clump of trees and fed the half-fertile soil. Down the road from the near-by village came Kurdish women, gracefully erect, shy, yet proud, each head crowned by a jar to be filled with water. There too herds of sheep and goats wended their way along the road to distant pastures, or patient donkeys laden with farm produce plodded wearily to market.

Buses and private cars, Baghdad-bound, spilled their passengers out for a stretch, a cup of tea at the near-by teahouse, and, for some, a climb partway up the mountain to see what these "foreigners" were doing. One - and an American, at that - whom we later met (Page 843) in Baghdad, unwittingly asked us if we knew who the "fools" were who, when he passed Bisitun, had been clinging to the precipitous sides of the mountain!

Far across the plain, another mountain range lifted its rugged and soon snowy crest. For 10 of our 21 days at Bisitun the weather was delightful, and crowds often gathered to watch our progress. After that, however, we had to fight the elements. First came the winds, buffeting our little scaffolding so hard that at times we felt like circus performers, flying through the air with great ease. One grievous day a page torn from my notebook scudded across the 52-foot length of ledge, and then, at terrific speed, began to go straight up the mountain. It was thousands of feet to the peaks above, and we seemed to see it go over the top. It was at one of these times, I believe, that Tom and Douglas gave Superman's urgent cry, "Up, up, and away!"

Then came clouds, rain, and cold-clouds that blanketed Bisitun in mist, with snow on top, and rains that drenched us, slowed our progress, and made our work almost a nightmare. One bitterly cold day, when Hussein appeared for work dressed only in a thin shirt and pair of trousers, we lent him a coat and a blanket, and still the brave lad's teeth chattered. Thereafter, as often as possible, I worked alone upon the scaffolding, although there seemed to be no way that one could keep warm. In addition to underwear and socks, two pairs of trousers, shirt, and sweater, all of wool, I wore an army coat and a native sheepskin jacket and still needed, thrown round my shoulders, an army blanket, which the wind was loath to leave in place.

After completing our examination of the Old Persian and first Elamite texts, we moved cables and scaffolding to the left of the relief to recheck readings of the second copy of the Elamite inscription. This done, we prepared to raise the scaffolding above the huge outjutting rock which, on two faces, bears the story of Darius as written in Babylonian. This, we knew, was a dangerous undertaking.

It was next to impossible to prevent the upper part of the winches from jamming up into the overhang. Also, as Rawlinson correctly noted a century ago, the mass of rock on which the inscription is engraved bears "every appearance . . . of being doomed to a speedy destruction, water trickling from above having almost separated the overhanging mass from the rest of the rock, and its own enormous weight thus threatening very shortly to bring it thundering down into the plain, dashed into a thousand fragments." Inch by inch we tried to ease the scaffolding up over the "hump," and time after time the overhang foiled us. Once, when the scaffold was sharply tilted, a cable somewhere above slipped over another overhang, and we were tipped at an even more alarming angle. Slowly we righted our fractious "craft" and made a fresh and, this time, a successful ascent. With the latex solution we were then able to obtain a new and better copy of this portion of the inscription.

Our work was nearing a close, but we had still to examine the reliefs and to follow the ancient path to its onetime end. Viewed from the ledge or from the ground below, the sculptures appear to be carved roughly and without much skill. This is by no means true. In fact, they compare favorably with the famous reliefs executed at Darius's royal capital, Persepolis, 450 miles to the southeast. Those at the capital were intended for public gaze; past them, on every New Year's festival, marched kings and princes bearing tribute from lands near and far. Those at Bisitun, on the contrary, are placed high up the mountainside where the life-size figures of the King and his guards appear diminutive, almost infinitesimal. Nevertheless, these same figures are excellently conceived and carefully executed: fingernails, beards and mustaches, bracelets, bows, even shoes are skillfully delineated.

With royal disdain, Darius stares at the nine rulers whom he conquered, and tramples with one foot his archenemy, Gaumata. The King's beard, frizzled and curled, is a separate block of stone set into the rock; it is held in place by two iron pegs, leaded in. One peg, thrust into a hole bored in the living rock, starts in his neck and ends in the inset block; the other begins in front of his mouth. All the orifices or openings were once filled with lead. Other inset pieces add detail and beauty to the shoulder and the bow of Darius, to the bow of one of his guards, and to the crown of the figure of the winged god, Ahuramazda. Jutting out more than three inches from the (Page 844) god's crown may still be seen an iron peg, encircled with lead; once, no doubt, the peg was surmounted by a silver or gold ball which glittered in the sun to indicate deity. Above the relief, an inscription bears Darius's proud boast of his kingship and royal descent. The wedges by which the names of his ancestors were cut into the rock were themselves filled in with lead so that they too could add luster and dignity.

The local villagers may even preserve some faint memory of the brilliant ornaments that once made of this monument a still more magnificent spectacle, for an interesting rumor fanned out over the countryside as we worked upon the relief. The rumor arose when, one day, my wife appeared at the Rock wearing a dress trimmed with gilded buttons and a braided goldlike belt. "The American," it was reported, "has given to his wife a gold belt from one of the figures of the nine dervishes"!

Here and there we could see signs of willful mutilation in the relief, all done in modern times by the bullets of passing riflemen. Because of this, and because of damage to the inscriptions caused by the underground streams of water, the Iranian Government has most properly sought some method by which the life of the sculptures and writings at Bisitun might be preserved. In times past, when queries of this sort have been directed to scholars, the only answer they knew to give was, "We must preserve them by recording them as accurately as possible." Our expedition, however, managed to preserve a portion of the relief in even better fashion: by making a mold of the noble figure of Darius, a guard, and the "liar" Gaumata. From that mold, in time, a cast will be made, and so the Great King may stand before peoples in America or elsewhere just as he has stood for almost 2,500 years on the Rock of Bisitun.

At long last, we were ready to trace the full course of the old path by which Darius's sculptors reached the spot on the mountainside almost inaccessible today. Slowly, cautiously, Hussein and I moved across the deliberately smoothed or scarped surface 60 feet around the mountain's face to the point where, perhaps, that path might once have had its beginning. A pleasant surprise awaited us: here was a level platform, with two steps leading downward. In the top step holes had been cut, doubtless for the purchase of wooden rails. Below the second step there was nothing but a vertical descent, for the stairway also had been chiseled away completely. But now we knew almost the full explanation of the method by which the Persians themselves had attained the heights.

All four goals were thus achieved: we had copied the four hitherto uncopied columns; we had checked all three texts which had previously been copied (and solved many difficulties in each of them); we had photographed, examined, and taken molds of the relief - and we had been able to determine the method by which the Persians had reached the heights to carve their handiwork. Then came the final day when, for the last time, we stood upon the ledge. My hands touched gently a portion of the inscription which our labor had clarified. "Says Darius the king . . . if thou shalt not conceal this edict, but shalt reveal it to the people, then shall Ahuramazda be thy friend, there shall be to thee a large family, and thou shalt live long." It was a pensive moment.

American and British corporations had given of their materials and of their time; the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Michigan had granted me the opportunity; and I and my family, with the help of a little Persian boy, had added our energy and skill. We had all been struggling to achieve the same goal - a recording of Darius's monument for posterity - and the Great King's blessing now seemed to be addressed directly to us!

Slowly, Hussein, Tom, and I descended the pathway and climbed down the ladder. As we reached the ground, our hands gave a gentle pat to a low bush beside the ladder, a bush covered with small pieces of cloth tied there by countless prayerful souls beseeching Allah for a son. We too uttered a silent prayer, but one of thankfulness that our labor, now ended, had been successful. For the last time, as a family group, we looked up once more to the majestic figure of the King of Persia. Then, hand in hand, touched by the last lingering rays of the sun, we let our eyes wander over the beautiful panorama of sky and mountains, plain and village below us. As we stood thus, the school bell pealed and the next generation of boys of Iran issued from the door of the schoolhouse far below. Our day, our work here, was done
.
Cameron, George G. "Darius Carved History on Ageless Rock". The National Geographic Magazine. Vol. XCVIII, Num. 6, Dec. 1950. (Pages 825-844)

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The Assyrian Tablets:

ASSYRIAN TABLETS:   KEY TO DISCOVERING THE LOST TRIBES

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THE ASSYIRIAN TABLETS: HARD EVIDENCE

 

The Net has been called the information highway, for good reason. That's all that's on it. Information. Information is power, right? God has ALL the information, that's why He's ALL powerful. Isn't information the thing that we seek constantly, all our lives? We're taking in information every waking minute. Eat, sleep, gather information. And then we die.

You'd think that such an important part of our existance would be treated in a much less cavalier manner, however. You'd think that our first priority in life would be information-proving. No one wants to act on MIS information, do they? It'd be a hell of a life to be acting on any and ALL information that came our way. We don't want to act on information that will not get us to our goal. We strive for accurate information.

We want evidence that substantiates the information we've received. When we've gathered enough evidence, we form a belief. It's our beliefs, that found our actions. Beliefs are what we act on.

The Christain walk depends on a strong belief in God's reality. Christians say that the Bible is God telling them about Himself; what He wants, things He's said and done, things He's said will happen. But unless the Bible can be somehow verified, it's no more than any other book of stories. And being such, the things that can't be verified, like heaven, God's constant Presense, and His provision, can hold no interest.

Our task, then, is to find as much verifiable evidence as possible, to help us act on those UN verifiable concepts. And we can't verifiy the Bible with itself, can we? Just because the same event is prophesied in two different places doesn't make it true. Objective evidence is always best. When we're sure we couldn't have made up something, we have more confidence in it.

Of course, the best places to check prophecy are history and archeology. On another page you find the Behistun Rock; a wonderful tie to the Lost Tribes. More than a century before Darius the Great commisioned Behistun rock, however, the Assyrians were watching their borders. Their enemies the Urartians and the Medes may start gathering an army. The Assyrians wanted to know everthing that was going on with their foes. The border guards, and spies, would send back to the King, reports on the movements and activities occuring in the neighboring countries.

A good king always keeps a library of books and letters, etc. In 1847, Sir Henry Layard, uncovered the Assyrian capitol city of Ninevah. The Royal Palace contained over 23,000 clay tablets with everything from business deals to spy reports from the borders. It is these letters that become the transition point in prophecy fulfillment. Like Behistun Rock, these reports reveal the names used by the Assyrians for the different groups of Israelites they had placed as a buffer state between them and their enemies. With these names in hand we can trace these people and check the prophecies about them.

The "Royal Letters" are dated about 707 BC, only fourteen years after the fall of Samaria, the capitol city of the Kingdom of Israel. Maps showing the deportation and subsequent migrations of the Lost Tribes will show you the geographical locations.

Letters number 1079 and 197 were written by Sennacherib to his father, King Sargon. Letter 1079 tells of a resounding defeat of the army of the Urartians. The troops were slain, and were fleeing. In the followup report of Letter 197 we find that this all happend in the land of Gamir. We still have one more step to go before we confirm that the Isrelites are the ones who live in that land.

In letter 112 it's reported that a people "went forth" from the midst of the Mannai, and into the "land of Urartu." Another Letter clearly separates the Urartians, the Mannai and the Gamera or Ga-me-ra-a-a as distinct from each other. The people named in Letter 112 are those Gamerraan; Cimmerians, in English. In captivity, the Israelites were renamed Gimira and Gamera and finally Cimmerians.

But these aren't ALL, just a smaller part of the total number of Israelites that were deported by the Assyrians. There were many thousands of others laced farther east. As the Persian writings on Behistun Rock show, these people were called by a different name. Among the prayer texts of Esarhaddon to the sun-god Shamash are several that name a people never heard of before in history, the "Iskuza" who evidently lived among the Mannai.

The name Iskuza can be easily deduced from the name "Isaac." The Israelites referred to themselves as House of Isaac before their exile - Amos 7:9,16. This name Isaac is the foundation for the name Scythian. Unlike the Assyrians, who gave the Israelites a name based back in the name of the Israelite King Omri, the Persians used the Israelites own name. History shows that the Iskuza were called "Shuthae" by the Greeks, and "Sacae" [also Saka and Sakka] by the Persians. Herodotus says that the Persians called the Sacae "Scythians." The Word Scythian only means nomad or wanderer, or one who lives in "booths." The word booth in Hebrew is Succoth, or scooth. The connections are obvious.

So, in the Assyrian tablets we are confronted with yet more Hard Evidence that the Israelites are not lost to history. Their names were changed. Why some of those folks have been traced to Japan! ! One of the most common Japanese names is Sakai. And their warriors have a name, Samurai, that is so close to the name of the Israelite capitol, Samaria, that the connection between Israel and Japan is virtually cemented.

In fact, the prophecy in Deuteronomy 33:17 that Israel would "push the people to the ends of the earth," is fulfilled. When one makes the connection between the Israelites and the Phoenicians, and, the Israelites and the Celts/Scythians, it's blantantly evident that the Isralites were the explorers/colonizers of all history. Those guys went everywhere. But that's another twenty subjects.

Here we zero in on the "transitional" names of the Israeites, allowing us to pick up their history, and thereby, reveal tens of prophecies which God has fulfilled. What better demonstration of God's effectiveness, than wielding some 3500 years of history!

Why, it's enough to make someone act in trust of God's Word. Faithe. What an unshakable foundation from which to deal with doubt and adversity. I've looked up and asked, "Are You really there God?" Then He helps me remember the Lost Tribes and His faithfullness to them. I'm tellin' ya, God is Number One.:-)

I thought you'd like to see an image of tablet 112 talked about above. But before you look at it, I have to give a lot of credit for help with this page.

E. Raymond capt is one of my "heroes." He has done wonderful work on many subjects. And I recommend that you visit his website. His book, "Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets," is a treasure store of Lost Tribes information, containing history, archeology, heraldry, and etimology. Mr. Capt is a scholar and documents well. He has given his life to disseminating God-confirming evidence from various disciplines. He is widely travelled and is himself a trained archeologist. Thank you, Raymond.

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The Ten Tribes Move Westward

 

The last Ten Tribes study revealed from God's Word in Hosea, our Father's intent to scatter the 'house of Israel', causing them to forget their heritage as part of God's People, taking on new names and customs and "...hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths." (Hosea 2:6). This 'wall' or hedged up way was to bring about the moving of the ten tribes to the lands our Father intended. It was done in similar manner that Rehoboam's heart was hardened towards the ten tribes after his father Solomon's death, to cause God's prophecy of the split of both 'houses' to come true (I Kings 12). The ten tribes had 'forgotten' their knowledge as God's People, similar to the forty years in the wilderness of being led by Jehovah out of Egypt through Moses until the time when they were to come to the promised land. Through generations this migration of the ten tribes came about. It didn't happen all at once. And it happened in stages, just as their captivity to Assyria was in stages (II Kings).

My plan with this particular study is not to document totally this migration through historical means. I only propose to call attention to a previously missing archaeological link to the lost ten tribe's migrations. In this, others will have reference to some valuable information and resources for their further study on the ten tribes of Israel, i.e. the 'house of Israel'.

And we ask our Father to give us a Word of Wisdom in this study, in Christ's Precious Name, Amen.

The Ten Tribes Scattered Further


Hosea the prophet revealed a summary of God's intent to scatter the ten tribes of Israel in all countries. Just to make sure that was no fairy tale from God's Word, and that we will know 'who' was to be scattered, let's cover a little from the Book of Ezekiel:

Ezek 1:3 The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

Ezekiel the prophet was in captivity to Babylon at this verse. This Chebar of Ezek.1:3 was in Babylon at his captivity home.

Ezek 3:4 And He said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with My words unto them.
5 For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel;

God sent Ezekiel to give a Message to both 'houses'. Here He is telling Ezekiel specifically to "...get thee unto the house of Israel". If you'll remember from the past studies, the 'house of Israel', i.e. the ten lost tribes, were taken captive by the Assyrian to Halah, Habor by the river Gozan, and to the cities of the Medes (II Kings 17 & 18). These areas of Assyria, were to the north of Babylon (modern day Iraq) where the 'house of Judah' went captive later. The house of Judah's captivity to Babylon came 130 years after Israel's, so the ten tribes were captive in 'the land of the Chaldeans' first. They were just a little farther north than Judah.

Ezek 3:15 Then I came to them of the captivity at Telabib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days.
16 And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
17 "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me."

This 'Chebar' here in verse 15 is not the same place where Ezekiel lived in Babylon. This area is where God sent him to give prophesy to the 'house of Israel', as evidenced by these verses. That means to Assyria where the ten tribes were. This is very important, because many think Ezekiel was talking to his Jewish brethren in Babylon only, and not to the 'house of Israel' or ten tribes. This Chebar in Ezek.3:15 is modern Khabour, a tributary of the Euphrates, forty-five miles from Babylon.1

Ezekiel is then brought to those of the 'house of Israel', and is told by God to make a drawing on a tile of Jerusalem, showing what God would do to it. And this Message was all to the 'house of Israel' even though Judah is mentioned along with it (Ezek.4 - 6). Part of God's Message in Ezekiel to the 'house of Israel', or the ten tribes, reveals they were to be further scattered after their Assyrian captivity:
Ezek 6:8 Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries.
9 And they that escape of you shall remember Me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from Me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
10 And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.
11 Thus saith the Lord GOD; "Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, 'Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel! for they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.

We know the 'house of Israel' was still being held captive in Assyria during Ezekiel's time of Babylon captivity. Even those of the 'house of Judah' had not returned to Jerusalem at this point, and were still in Babylon. And yet, God through Ezekiel is telling the ten tribes that there would be a 'remnant' which will escape the sword of captivity, when they are scattered through the countries (Ezek.6:8). That means the 'house of Israel' or ten tribes were to be further 'scattered' from Assyria, not back to the Holy Land, but 'through the countries'.

E. Raymond Capt and Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets

Biblical historian, archaeologist, and educator E. Raymond Capt has provided us a very important archaeological link for the lost ten tribes of Israel in his excellent work Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. He has joined many 'links' together about the 'house of Israel' from hard work done by researchers, historians, and archaeologists of the past. In my opinion, the conclusions Capt arrives at from his research and of others, concerning the Behistun and Assyrian Tablet artifacts, is possibly the single most important work on the 'Ten Lost Tribes of Israel', from the scientific aspect. There is 'hard' evidence in tone, not just from The Bible standpoint. Our Father has ensured His People would find His Truth, even to our day and time.

The "Jehu Stele" or "Black Obelisk"

Sir Austin Henry Layard of England, found a stele in Kurkh on the Tigris river in A.D. 1846, which depicts Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, in triumph over Syria and portions of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (II Kings 17 & 18). It shows one of Western Semitic dress bowing on all fours to Shalmaneser. The text inscription above the scene states:

The tribute of Jehu (Iaua) son of Khumri (Omri): I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king, purukhti fruits.2

This 'Jehu' was the son of Jehoshaphat and one of the anointed kings over the 'house of Israel' (1 Kings 19:16). The word 'Khumri' in the "Jehu Stele" is the Assyria name for Omri. Thus the Assyrians called the kings of the 'house of Israel' at that time 'son of Omri'. This 'Omri' was a captain of Northern Kingdom Israel (ten tribes) which the people appointed their king (1 Kings 16:16).
 
Therefore, the word Khumri, which refers to Omri king of northern Israel, is the first name used by Assyria for the ten tribes, or 'house of Israel'. More evidence coming up...

The Assyrian Tablets< strong>

English archaeologist Sir Austin Henry Layard also discovered, later at Kiyunjik in 1847, stores of clay tablets with Assyrian cuneiform writing along with Sennacherib's palace, and the ancient capitol city of Nineveh. An Assyrian text translated from 1,471 of these 23,000 clay tablets discovered by Sir Austin Henry Layard, was published by R.F. Harper, and an English translation made available in 1930 by Leroy Waterman at the University of Michigan.3

These tablets cover a period of Assyrian history at the time of the captivity to Assyria of the 'house of Israel', i.e. ten tribes.

The Assyrian name of Khumri for the 'sons of Omri' taken from the Jehu Stele mentioned above, was a pre-captivity name for the Israelites. These Assyrian Tablets further link the later Assyrian names for the 'house of Israel'. According to translations from these Assyrian Tablets, Khumri became changed to 'Gamir' and 'Gamera', during the house of Israel's captivity in Assyria. The Assyrian name "ga-me-ra-a-a" is translated to 'Cimmerian' by Prof. Leroy Waterman in Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire, published by the University of Michigan in 1930.4 Thus, the word Cimmerian became one of the identifiers for those of the 'house of Israel'.

The Assyrian tablet gives proof for this Cimmerian marker in "Letter 112 - Arad-Sin to the Overseer of the Palace", by connecting the Cimmerians with those of Gamir and Gamera.5 These Assyrian Tablets have provided a strong archaeological missing link to the 'ten tribes of Israel' which have been searched for many years. As several ancient histories, such as by Herodotus, Strabo, etc., mention the Cimmerians, their origins have been hard to determine without any archaeological foundation. The discovery of the Assyrian Tablets and their translation bridges the missing link in the gap.
The Greek geographer Strabo states this about the Cimmerians:

Those Cimmerians whom they also call Trerans, or some tribe of the Cimmerians, often overran the countries on the right of the Pontu (south of the Black Sea) and those adjacent to them, at one time have invaded Paphlagnia, and at another time Phrygia even, at which time Midas drank bull's blood, they say, and thus went down to his doom. 6

Strabo also goes further about where these Cimmerians migrated:

Lygdamis (Tugdamme in Assyrian records) king of the Cimmerians, at the head of his own soldiers, marched as far as Lydia and Ionia, and captured Sardis (capitol of Lydia) but lost his life in Cilicia.7

Interestingly enough, these areas where Strabo said these Cimmerians migrated to, are all regions where Paul and the Apostles went to preach The Gospel of Christ. Paul himself was from Tarsus, in Cilicia (Acts 9:11; 22:3). And Christ told the Apostles in Matthew 10:5: "...Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of Samaritans enter ye not: 6:But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Paul's commission in Acts 9:15 was to preach Christ to the Gentile, kings, and children of Israel. With Christ's command to go to t e lost sheep, these nation links and migrations of the Cimmerians should become apparent. The seven Churches of Revelation were also in these areas of Asia Minor where Strabo says the Cimmerians migrated to.

This link Strabo and other ancient and modern histories cited by Capt in Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets, joins many peoples of seemingly separate tribal names into the majority of one peoples, which went north, and west, northwest and southwest, from Assyria.

Another branch of the Israelites which can be traced to the Scythians are the 'Iskuza', mentioned also in the Assyrian Tablets. As the term 'house of Isaac' is used to refer to the 'house of Israel' in Amos 7:16, this word 'Iskuza' was a natural Assyrian corruption of 'Isaac'. This label further grew into the labels of 'Shuthae' by the Greeks and the word 'Sacae' by the Persians, which refer to the Scythians.8

By these two groups, one called Cimmerians, which migrated west to Asia Minor and Western Europe from Assyria first, and the second group of Scythians who later migrated west to take over many of the Cimmerians' lands, the ancestry of the peoples of Europe and Asia Minor can be traced to modern times. These would later form the Celts (Cimmerians), the Gauls, Normans, Norsk or Norse, Goths, and Germani peoples. A migration to ancient Britain by the Angles and Saxons (Isaac's sons), would also form the several Welsh, English, Scots, and Irish peoples. These various peoples, of seemingly different ancestry, have mixed to make up the founding ancestral nations of today's Europe. And those peoples who f rmed Europe all have one major trait in common. Though they had different names, and languages, they made up the Caucasian race which settled in Europe, having migrated from Assyria of Israelite origins. As can be discovered by Britain's history especially, the various conquests of Britain by supposedly different nations of heritage, such as the Anglo-Saxons from Germany, the Danish and Norse, and then lastly the Normans of France, it should have been made up of many different races. All these various peoples which invaded Britain were of one common stock, either descendents of the Cimmerians, or of the Scythians. And they all have a heritage as being part of the 'house of Israel'.

The Behistun Rock

On an old caravan road from Babylon to Ecbatana, the ancient capitol of Median, there is a carving on a mountain side made by Darius the Mede dated at 515 B.C. An English officer named Henry C. Rawlinson deciphered the cuneiform inscriptions on this carved mountain side, called the Behistun Rock. The inscriptions on the Behistun Rock were in three languages, Babylonian (Accadian), Elamite (Susian), and Persian.9
 
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There are 20 panels of carvings. In the center is a depiction of King Darius with his foot over one captive chief, and 9 other captives all bound together.

Each captive chief is dressed differently, some with short tunics, others with long robes, and still others with the characteristic Hebrew cap.

Each paragraph of each inscription panel begins with the following: "I am Darius, the king of kings, the king of Persia." And the 10th panel mentions "Sarocus", the Sacan, one in Hebrew attire.10

The word Armenia is mentioned also, as this was the area where these captives were taken and placed by the Assyrians. The word Sakkas is named in these inscriptions also. In the Elamite and Persian language inscriptions, the word Sakka is used to name some of these 'chieftans' in captivity to Assyria, but in the Babylonian inscription version, the word employed is Gimiri (verified for the British Museum by L.W. King and R.C. Thomson - Sculptures and Inscriptions of Behistun, pg.161).11 That word Gimiri links back to what the Assyrians called the sons of Omri of the 'house of Israel', that is Khumri, and Cimri, or Cimmerian.

The Greek historian Herodotus gives an account of the Scyths (Sythians) in pursuit of the Cimmerians following a small passage known as the Dariel Pass, through the Caucasus Mountains northeast of the Black Sea.

Herodotus states:

Scythia still retains traces of the Cimmerians; there are Cimmerian castles, and a Cimmerian ferry, also a tract called Cimmeria, and a Cimmerian Bosphorus. It appears likewise that the Cimmerians, when they fled into Asia (Asia Minor) to escape the Scyths, made a settlement in the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope was afterwards built. The Scyths, it is plain, pursued them, and missing their road, poured into Media. For the Cimmerians kept the line which led along the sea-shore, but the Scyths in their pursuit held the Caucasus upon their right, thus proceeding inland, and falling upon Media. This account is one which is common both to Greeks and barbarians.12

The name of Caucasian was derived from those peoples who once held and migrated through the Caucasus Mountains, east of the Black Sea. These would then further migrate west to the isles in Europe. II Esdras 13 in the Apocrypha is possibly another reference to this Passage in the Caucasus by the Cimmerians and Scythians.

The Scythian migrations also went further east, to the Orient. These 'Sok-wang', meaning 'Sakka princes', fled to a valley of the upper Indus with Kashmir and Afghanistan as borders.13

The historic traces of the Sacae, the Scythians, and the Cimmerians, have been written of by many historians, both ancient and modern. The evidence for their later migrations to Europe is plentiful. The only 'link' missing was that of the lost ten tribe's captivity while in Assyria, and just how their identity as Israel was lost. Truly as our Heavenly Father said through Hosea:

Hosea 2:13 And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat Me, saith the LORD.

He would hedge up their paths so they could not be found, and visit upon them the full Baalim of pagan idolatry which caused their falling away. And the very Baalism which the 'house of Israel' coveted became the system which gave them new names (khumri), losing their original heritage as God's People 'Ammi'. They became 'Lo-Ammi', not God's People.

Hosea 2:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

15 And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

Then when it was time, they would be lured through the 'wilderness' and scattered through the countries, until... they came to new lands, and new vineyards, and Israel began to remember GOD through His Son Jesus Christ.

Hosea 2:16 And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call Me Ishi; and shalt call Me no more Baali.

17 or I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.

18 And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.

And when they finally migrated to their new lands, and Christ our New Covenant was offered, GOD took away their 'names of Baalim' out of their mouths which Assyria gave them, becoming again 'Ammi', God's People.

Yet, paganism and worship of false gods, which are no gods, is still with His People of the 'house of Israel'. Once again God's People of the 'house of Israel' are becoming lost and again 'Lo-Ammi' (not My People). And another cycle of the same false Babylon World Order system is taking God's People into another captivity. This time that bondage is not of geographical paths to Babylon and Assyria, but enslavement of our hearts and minds away from GOD and Christ, a spiritual captivity. Only through deception can one go into captivity again today. Understanding The Knowledge of Christ is the only Way to prevent that slavery of deception upon us today. Our founding fathers of the Western Christian Nations suffered that captivity and battled for our freedoms we have been so accustomed to. Let us not go into bondage again, for we are 'Ammi', His People, GOD's People. And 'Ammi' includes all believers on Christ Jesus, a spiritual and a physical Israel.
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Footnotes:

1 The Companion Bible, (Kregel Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI., 1990), margin note, p.1109.
2 Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. E. Raymond Capt, M.A., A.I.A., F.S.A. Scot. (Artisan Sales, Muskogee, OK, 1985), p. 97-99.
3 Ibid., pp. 100-101.
4 Ibid., pp. 122-123.
5 Ibid., p. 115.
6 Ibid., p. 125.
7 Ibid., pp. 135-126.
8 Ibid., pp. 120-123.
9 Ibid., p. 137.
10 Ibid., p. 139.
11 Ibid., pp. 139-140.
12 The Histories of Herodotus, Book IV.12. Translated by George Rawlinson, (Everyman's Library, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997), p.308.
13 Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. E. Raymond Capt, M.A., A.I.A., F.S.A. Scot. (Artisan Sales, Muskogee, OK, 1985), p. 157.
Original source of all Behistun images from either Wonders of The Past, Vol.2 (1937), J.A. Hammerton, Wise & Compton; or History of The World. Vol.I (1909), J.C. Ridpath (Jones Brothers Publishing), as presented through Art Today.