- 23 Jun 2016 22:05
#14694920
I am having a hard time deciding who the #3 most well known king in chronological order from ancient history is.
Sargon is clearly the earliest, not counting Gilgamesh whom we do not know was real or fiction. From the ridiculousness of the stories about Gilgamesh I would have to go with fiction for Gilgamesh.
The Epic Of Gilgamesh is more famous for its flood story, which predates Moses by about 15 centuries. Maybe Moses was taught the story while he himself was a young prince of Egypt living in the palace of Pharaoh. Maybe he decided to incorporate this flood story into his other stories for his introduction called Bereshet (Genesis) to his 5 volume multi scroll history of the ancient world to 1450 BCE called "The Torah". That's really all that Gilgamesh is famous for. The rest of Gilgamesh is just about two frat boyz who hang out and boink temple maids and prostitutes and each other. Bisexuality was the norm anciently, or so Gilgamesh and the other historians who are of Greece and Rome tell us.
Hammurabi is clearly the favorite for the #2 spot. And even he is just another ordinary vanilla king, nothing really great about him, other than he created a bunch of stele with laws on it -- "written in stone". Even so, his is the second name in history that we learn of from archaeology regarding an actual person who actually lived, Sargon having been the first. It is really nice that Hammurabi appears on the stele as well, so this gives us a look at what ancient kings and what their gods looked like.
For #3 we do NOT have any archeology unfortunately. But we do have a name. However this name does not come from archaeology because nobody in West Asia mentions him. He was too far and remote from all of them. And it does not come from history either, since history was not yet invented by Herodotus in 440 BC Greece yet. This king's name, who is third on the list, comes from literature -- the first literature of the European world. His name comes from the Iliad. His name is AGAMEMNON !
The best journalistic prose written about Agamemnon comes from the British documentary filmmaker Michael Wood in his book which accompanies his documentary, "In Search Of The Trojan War" (Facts On File Pubs, Oxford England, 1985).
Obviously the primary source is the Greek epic poem "The Iliad" itself. Epic poetry is not history. But even so the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann used The Iliad to find an ancient fortress on a hill in western Turkey called Hisarlic (39.957 North Latitude, 26.239 East Longitude -- from Greenwich England UK) which everyone believes is ancient Troy. No doubt the ancients themselves also believed it, because they themselves built a Roman era city on top of it as well. Thus there are 9 ancient cities built upon this hilltop, of which #6 is believed by most scholars to be the Troy of the Iliad, although Wood himself believes it to be #7A.
There is even a large ancient burial mound located nearby Hisarlik which is at 39.961 N, 26.168 E which resembles one of the burial mounds described in The Iliad -- presumably that of the mythical warrior Achilles who was killed by Paris with an arrow-shot to the ankle.
The best motion picture made about the Trojan War was by director Wolfgang Petersen in his 2004 movie "Troy". He takes a few liberties which are unauthentic like the killing of Menelaos on the battlefield, which The Iliad does not say happened. And he condenses the whole war into a couple of weeks, which The Iliad says took 10 years. Yes I loved the movie and watched it several times. Yes I have read The Iliad as well, both in English and in Greek.
In a scene in this movie, Agamemnon confounds Achilles by saying, "History does not remember soldiers, history remembers kings! ... I will carve "Agamemnon" in the stone!"
Unfortunately Agamemnon did NOT carve his name anywhere. And he could not if he had wanted to. Because the ancient Greeks of the Bronze Age were illiterate, we are told by Josephus Flavius the Jewish/Roman historian in 70 AD. Literacy did not come to the Greeks until about 700 BCE at the earliest. The Greek tradition is that Cadmus the new king and founder of Thebes came from Phoenicia and brought Phoenician writing with him about that time. The Jewish tradition is that Moses invented the Hebrew alef-bayt in order to copy the Torah more easily into writing than Egyptian Hieroglyphics allowed, taking two dozen Hieroglyphs for his pictographic letters from Alef to Tav. King Solomon taught them to the scribes of King Hiram of Tyre when they helped him build the first temple at Jerusalem. And thus the Phoenicians learned them.
But epic literature and oral tradition are not history. And until 700 BCE the Greeks were illiterate. So nobody carved Agamemnon's name in the stone.
Sargon is clearly the earliest, not counting Gilgamesh whom we do not know was real or fiction. From the ridiculousness of the stories about Gilgamesh I would have to go with fiction for Gilgamesh.
The Epic Of Gilgamesh is more famous for its flood story, which predates Moses by about 15 centuries. Maybe Moses was taught the story while he himself was a young prince of Egypt living in the palace of Pharaoh. Maybe he decided to incorporate this flood story into his other stories for his introduction called Bereshet (Genesis) to his 5 volume multi scroll history of the ancient world to 1450 BCE called "The Torah". That's really all that Gilgamesh is famous for. The rest of Gilgamesh is just about two frat boyz who hang out and boink temple maids and prostitutes and each other. Bisexuality was the norm anciently, or so Gilgamesh and the other historians who are of Greece and Rome tell us.
Hammurabi is clearly the favorite for the #2 spot. And even he is just another ordinary vanilla king, nothing really great about him, other than he created a bunch of stele with laws on it -- "written in stone". Even so, his is the second name in history that we learn of from archaeology regarding an actual person who actually lived, Sargon having been the first. It is really nice that Hammurabi appears on the stele as well, so this gives us a look at what ancient kings and what their gods looked like.
For #3 we do NOT have any archeology unfortunately. But we do have a name. However this name does not come from archaeology because nobody in West Asia mentions him. He was too far and remote from all of them. And it does not come from history either, since history was not yet invented by Herodotus in 440 BC Greece yet. This king's name, who is third on the list, comes from literature -- the first literature of the European world. His name comes from the Iliad. His name is AGAMEMNON !
The best journalistic prose written about Agamemnon comes from the British documentary filmmaker Michael Wood in his book which accompanies his documentary, "In Search Of The Trojan War" (Facts On File Pubs, Oxford England, 1985).
Obviously the primary source is the Greek epic poem "The Iliad" itself. Epic poetry is not history. But even so the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann used The Iliad to find an ancient fortress on a hill in western Turkey called Hisarlic (39.957 North Latitude, 26.239 East Longitude -- from Greenwich England UK) which everyone believes is ancient Troy. No doubt the ancients themselves also believed it, because they themselves built a Roman era city on top of it as well. Thus there are 9 ancient cities built upon this hilltop, of which #6 is believed by most scholars to be the Troy of the Iliad, although Wood himself believes it to be #7A.
There is even a large ancient burial mound located nearby Hisarlik which is at 39.961 N, 26.168 E which resembles one of the burial mounds described in The Iliad -- presumably that of the mythical warrior Achilles who was killed by Paris with an arrow-shot to the ankle.
The best motion picture made about the Trojan War was by director Wolfgang Petersen in his 2004 movie "Troy". He takes a few liberties which are unauthentic like the killing of Menelaos on the battlefield, which The Iliad does not say happened. And he condenses the whole war into a couple of weeks, which The Iliad says took 10 years. Yes I loved the movie and watched it several times. Yes I have read The Iliad as well, both in English and in Greek.
In a scene in this movie, Agamemnon confounds Achilles by saying, "History does not remember soldiers, history remembers kings! ... I will carve "Agamemnon" in the stone!"
Unfortunately Agamemnon did NOT carve his name anywhere. And he could not if he had wanted to. Because the ancient Greeks of the Bronze Age were illiterate, we are told by Josephus Flavius the Jewish/Roman historian in 70 AD. Literacy did not come to the Greeks until about 700 BCE at the earliest. The Greek tradition is that Cadmus the new king and founder of Thebes came from Phoenicia and brought Phoenician writing with him about that time. The Jewish tradition is that Moses invented the Hebrew alef-bayt in order to copy the Torah more easily into writing than Egyptian Hieroglyphics allowed, taking two dozen Hieroglyphs for his pictographic letters from Alef to Tav. King Solomon taught them to the scribes of King Hiram of Tyre when they helped him build the first temple at Jerusalem. And thus the Phoenicians learned them.
But epic literature and oral tradition are not history. And until 700 BCE the Greeks were illiterate. So nobody carved Agamemnon's name in the stone.
Last edited by yiostheoy on 23 Jun 2016 22:49, edited 1 time in total.