LOST TRIBES
RADIO SERIES
ASSYRIAN BORDER REPORTS
Stay tuned for Straight Talk about God with our host Jack Flaws.
Good morning. It’s time to stretch with Jack on history and philosophy of the Bible. Now, this is a re-recording of history and philosophy of the Bible show no.8 that through mechanical difficulty did not get recorded as it aired.
Care to listen while you read?
Who were the people known as Omri? Or Iskuza or Sacae or Saka, Cimmerians, Celts, Kimmerioi, Gamer or Gimira or Massagetae. And who are the Germans, the sons of Isaac, the Sarmatae, the Gauls, the Cimbri, the Cimri, the Omri, the Scythians, the Schuthae? Are they really all just parts of a large group of people called the kingdom of Israel? I say, yes. Ancient history says yes and modern history doesn’t seem to know a thing about it. But closed minds have missed a lot of important stuff since the beginning of earth, huh?
Now I thought that last week we looked at enough evidence to show the connection between the Israelites and the Celts, but certain comments through the week and my feelings over more clarification being needed, we’re gonna do a little bit more with that, connect the evidence. We’ll really nail it down this week and try to go on.
The gestalt of the whole study is that first of all, the Kingdoms Israel and Judah split apart. They separated. The northern kingdom of ten tribes, northern kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom of two tribes. And they split apart for some 200 years and even go to war and so forth. And then Assyria up to the northeast of Palestine comes down and conquers in successive waves over a 30, 40 year period all of the ten tribes of Israel plus a whole bunch of people from the southern kingdom of Judah as they besieged Jerusalem and couldn’t defeat it, they still carried away many of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, which were the Jews at that time. None of the ten-tribed kingdom were Jews. Some Jews did get carried away with the Assyrian conquering of the northern kingdom of the house of Israel. And within 50 years, the house of Israel, different parts of it – – a lot of them had became mercenaries and throughout the next hundred years or so, they fought on many different sides. Sometimes they fought with the Assyrians against the Medes. Sometimes they fought with the Medes against the Assyrians. Sometime they fought against the Samarians who were their own brothers.
Then, over the course of time, a hundred years or so, they started moving from the area they were placed in by Assyria which was between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea just south of Caucasus mountains right around Lake Van and Urmia. They start migrating from there to the west, the east and the north and over the Caucasus mountains and under the Black Sea and around under the bottom of the Caspian Sea to the east. And these migrations -- they turn into the Samarians mainly based under the Black Sea and the Scythians between the Black Sea on each side of the Caspian Sea, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, on each side, the south, the east and the west side of the Caspian Sea, they become the people known – that will be known as modern history as the Scythians.
Now, from there, both of those groups – the Samarians and the Scythians all migrate all around Europe up into the Baltic sea in the north shore of the North Sea, on the shores of North Sea. And some even go west and then return east, the Samarians do that. Some of the Samarians go west and a couple of hundred years later, they come back and they conquer the people that are there which are part of their own people again and resettle the land. So they form the Scythians and the Samarians, the Celtic nations of northwest Europe eventually becoming England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden Norway, Denmark, France, Spain, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Now, the connection to the Israelites is made by three, mainly three archaeological discoveries. First of all, the royal library at Nineveh.
Also, the Behistun rock which is a huge rock inscription in the Middle East out there, a few hundred miles northeast of Babylon. Now, we’ll get into that a lot more detail today. Behistun rock is, was commissioned by Darius the great, Darius the Mede king or emperor of the Medo-Persian empire in the early 500's B.C.
Also there’s a trilingual inscription on a gold plate that tells us these connections.
Also, in the tombs, in the tomb of Darius the great. There’s other inscriptions.
But first, let’s take a look. We done some of this last week, but let’s take a closer look at the Behistun rock. Behistun rock again is a trilingual inscription. In three different languages. It was put there by Darius the great as he was the emperor of the Medo Persian empire at the time. The three languages were the Babylonian language, which is the same as the Assyrians. So that’s Assyria and Babylonia is the same language, and Persian and Elamite. The kingdom of Elam was just west or just east and just a little bit north of Babylonian right next to Babylonian. So there’s another word that or name for Elamite is Susian, S-U-S-I-A-N, Susian language.
So you got three different languages all telling the same exact story that they can cross-check. And if you can read one language, then you can decipher, and if you’re in the business anyway , you can decipher the other two languages and thereby decipher a lot of other archeological finds that have that particular language on it and come to understand the people you know at that time.
BEHISTUN ROCK
Behistun Rock. I’m reading out of my favorite book on the lost tribes, Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets(2004). This is the basis of this book and this work by E. Raymond Capt. However, it’s only the loose format. The reason, the motivation behind the whole book, the whole book, covers many, many different aspects of this lost tribe and the history of the Israelite nation. There’s a lot of different aspects of this study, not just the fact that they’re the Celts. There’s lots and lots of sides issues that are very important. And he goes into all of that, but he’s done a lot of good research and he’s has the biggest overview.
See the Behistun rock, for instance, Behistun rock has nothing to do with the Assyrians tablets, except that they’re both written in one certain language. The Assyrian tablets are written in Assyrian which is the same as Babylonian and the Behistun rock is written – one of the stories is in Babylonian. Well, big deal. I mean that’s no big connection. If you’re going to write a book on the Assyrian tablets, then what’s Behistun Rock doing in there? See. Well, he’s not writing a book on the Assyrian tablets, he’s writing a book on the lost tribes, and there’s lot more to it than that. Okay. But I can’t recommend the book any more highly than I have. It’s just really a good book. I got a lot of different books on the lost tribes, but this one really gives you a good overview.
“The old caravan road from Babylon to Ecbatana (ancient capital of Median) runs by a limestone mountain rising out of the plain to a height of 1,700 feet. About 300 feet above the base, on the perpendicular side, is a rock face containing an inscription made by the order of Darius the Great about 515 B.C. The inscription not only fixes the date of his reign, but provides some interesting references to the so-called ‘Lost Tribes of Israel.’ The memorial measures about 150 feet long by 100 feet high.” (P. 137) Half a football field long right and a third of a football field high. And it’s on the side of this rock face, a perpendicular side. Try to imagine what kind of work that would be to cut that into the face of that mountain. Really neat. See. There were – obviously in a rock face that large, in an area that large, there’s gonna be cracks and chinks and stuff in the rock face so they even – pieces were filled in and secured with molten lead in the thing. Must have cost a fortune to do that. But that’s what kings did in those days you know they wanted to tell the world how great they were and all the wonderful things they’d done, who you have they conquered mainly, and how many people they ruled over and at what time and all that. So they’d have their memorial to the future. Well, I give a big thank you to Darius for his bent in that direction because without him, we’d have a whole lot less to go on.
Behistun rock. Yeah. “The inscriptions were in three languages, Babylonian” which is “(Acadian), Elamite, (Susian), or Persian. They were chiefly in the cuneiform or wedge-like characteristics. While many scholars should be recognized for their efforts toward solving the puzzle of the wedge-shaped script, the young English officer in the Persian army, Henry C. Rawlinson” is his name -- this was in 1840 – “is given credit for successfully deciphering the Old Persian signs. The trilingual inscription on what today is known as the ‘Behistun Rock’ provided the ‘key.’ Once it was determined that the text of the three languages were identical, it was only a matter of time till scholars were able to read Elamite and the Acadian writings.” (P. 137)
“The dominant feature of the Behistun Rock inscriptions is King Darius in royal attire and surrounded by captives. Around the captives are five main panels, twenty in all. The first panel consists of 19 paragraphs and 96 lines. Each paragraph commences with the words ‘I am Darius, the king of kings, king of Persia.’ The second panel has 16 paragraphs and 96 lines; over each figure is a brief history of the man and the tribe he represents.” (P. 139) See, he’s surrounded by captives, remember. Okay. Not surrounded, but you’ll see in just a minute.
“The tenth panel is most interesting of all to a Bible student because it speaks of ‘Sarocus,’ the Sacan,” S-A-C-A-N, “who has the Hebrew form of head-dress. Most noteworthy is King Darius majestically--” (p. 139) So there’s a lot of this writing going on. These huge panels that are 75 to maybe 50, 50 to 75 feet high of the main text, but then there’s all these – this big, huge picture that’s been carved out of the mountain of Darius and a couple of his men and his captives in front of him.” Well, over each one these guys and there’s a lot of little inscriptions, Okay. Here’s a little bit better, a little more detail description of the scene there.
“King Darius majestically standing before nine persons united by a rope around their necks and their hands fastened behind their backs.” (P. 139) See, there’s a rope that goes – it draws a line straight across their all these nine guys -- their necks, and it’s tied around their necks and their hands are tied around their backs.
“The tenth man is prostrate on his back; the right foot of the king upon his body.” (P. 139) And the king beating his chest with fury. No, he’s not doing that.
“No two of the prisoners are dressed alike. Some of them have short tunics, others have long flowing robes. They are evidently the head chiefs of the ten tribes of Israel.” (P. 139) Oh, well, you can’t just say that from how it looks.
Well, here’s what the text has to say. “The word ‘Kana,’” the land of Canaan, Kana “occurs 28 times in the inscription and the word ‘Armenia’ also occurs frequently. This is the area from which the prisoners were taken – the very area where the ten tribes of Israel” were settled “by the Assyrians.” (P. 139) They came from Canaan. They were in Armenia.
“...by this time (about 517 B.C,) a branch of the Gimiri,” – now these Gimiri we talked about them last week. “...Gimiri (called ‘Sakka’ by the Persians)” Same people, two different names. The Persians called them Sakka; the Assyrians called them Gimiri. Okay. “...had already migrated a long way behind Bactria and dwelt on the eastern extremity of the Persian empire.” (P. 140) Bactria is a couple hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea, east of the Caspian Sea. These Sakka had come up east of the Caspian Sea and gone farther west from that, some 5 to 600 miles west of the Caspian Sea. A long way beyond Bactria.
“In another inscription, written on a gold tablet,...” Remember I told you about this gold, this gold plate. That ends Behistun rock. That ends Behistun rock, but this gold tablet about a foot squared, Darius again writes – he gave us a lot of stuff to work with, Darius did, “‘The kingdom that I hold is from Sakka,” S-A-K-K-A, “which is beyond Sogdiana to Cush...” Sogdiana is way over east of the Caspian Sea to Ethiopia. Cush is Ethiopia. “...and from India to Sardis. This provided added evidence that by 500 B.C, some of the Sakkas were far to the east near the upper Jaxartes Basin.” (P. 140) which is five to fix hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea. It’s a long way east.
“Additional evidence that the Sakka were a branch of Gimiri or Israelites is proved by another trilingual inscription found in the tomb of Darius, in southwest Persia.” (P. 140) He says “Darius listed three separate groups of Sakkas;” (p. 140) Okay. So here we see immediately – it doesn’t say this, but immediately what we have is three distinguishable groups, not a couple of hundred people, huh, three distinguishable groups of the same big group called Sakkas. So Sakka isn’t some group of people, it’s a huge generic group of people, Americans, Canadians. Maybe not that big, of course, but that kind of thing. Now are you a Texan or are you an American? I’m both. See. Well, maybe these first Sakkas that Darius lists on inscription in his tomb, the Amyrgian Sakkas were Texans and the “Sakkas with pointed caps,” the next one he lists are Californians, and the “Sakkas who are beyond the sea” are the Massachusetts or whatever you want to say for that. See, the point being that these Sakkas may have been, for instance, the tribes of Naphthali, Zebulun, and Simeon in a group who were close to each other and traveled in a group, but they were three separate tribes. That would explain that very easily.
Now, “these inscriptions have been known for many years but the publications dealing with them have generally” been passed over, “...generally passed over the translation of ‘Gimiri’ to ‘Sakka’ with scarcely a comment. Perhaps it seems quite almost inexplicable to the historians. And yet, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the inscriptions (also the writings of Josephus)...” – we went into that last week –“...is that the Iskuza were called ‘Sakka.’” (P. 140) The Assyrians had two groups of people that they named, ‘Iskuza, I-S-K-U-Z-A –we went through that last week – and the Gimira. The Iskuza were the group of people that we call the Scythians. The Gimira or Gimiri or Gamera or any of those four, five different names were the people that we know as the Samarians. . But the Iskuza were called by the Persians, Sakka. So we got Sakkas being called Iskuza by the Assyrians.
“Therefore, the logical conclusion is the ‘Iskuza,’ the ‘Sakka,’ and the ‘Gimiri’ are the same people.” (P. 140) Just as the Scythians and the Samarians. When you go back through the names, there they’re the same people. Scythian just means wanderer any way.
“Then in reviewing the Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire, it is evident that the ‘Iskuza, the ‘Sakka,’ the ‘Scythians,’ the ‘Cimmerians,’ the ‘Samarians’ and the ‘Gimiri’ are all Israelites.” (P. 140) All Israelites.
BORDER REPORTS
Next, we want to get into the border reports. Border reports. Now, Assyria was the conquering empire at the time. They conquered the ten-tribed kingdom and not only them but a whole lot of people too. They picked up the house of Israel and some Jews and transplanted them up there just a little bit west or east rather and somewhat north of where they were as a buffer state between them and their enemies, the Medes and the Urartians. But what they did was they gave the people a certain amount of freedom, and hoping that their army and so forth would be quick enough to get in and put down any insurrection. And all these people were paying tribute to the Assyrians. Well, they had somewhat of a loose trip happening so they had a lot of uprisings, and it wasn’t easy. They had a lot of problems with people not paying and revolting and that kind of thing. And what do you do when you have problems with the enemy. You get your information from you know your intelligence net. You send out your spies and so forth. And that’s what Assyria did. They sent out a lot of spies. They set up this intelligence and surveillance net to send back to the king reports on what was happening in the outlying areas you know keep the people down and under control.
All right. They also were trying at that particular time to subdue all of lower Mesopotamia in the Babylonian area. That’s where the heavy fighting was going on. So they didn’t have a lot of might up in the area where the Israelites and the Urartians, and farther to the east, the Medes were, and by plunking the Israelites down en masse by, some 5 million of them over this wide band of maybe 500 by a 100 miles in that upper area, in that area up there between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. By placing those people there, the other guys would have to fight their way through to Assyria hopefully and acting as a buffer state, that would kind of relieve some of their military might to go and fight with the Babylonians and try to get Mesopotamia under control. Well, there was a lot of insurrection to the north. They were trying to go on down there, so they got this intelligence network to report all the major military moves of in the Lake Van and Lake Uremia area.
And I’ve talked about these before, but I want to read you a few of them. Now, I am not going to read all of them out of this book. I’m not going to read all of each one. But when you read all of them, you’ll find this picture that’s built up that says the Assyrians were worried about the Urartians. The Urartians who lived above Lake Van, Lake Medea, or Lake Urmia rather, they were afraid they might come down and start encroaching and taking land away from Assyria. Well, what happened was that the Urartians did gear up for war but they had to fight with some of the Gimira or Khumri or the Gamera first. When they did that, they got wiped out. And throughout the sequence of border reports – that’s what this proves, that the Urartians went to battle with the Israelites and lost.
Okay. “One summer day in 1847, Layard,” L-A-Y-A-R-D, Layard, archeologist “drove his spade into a mound at Kiyunjik and struck the buried walls of” the Assyrian palace, “an Assyrian palace. He had found Sennacherib’s splendid palace and the famous capital of Assyria, Nineveh, that great city,’ which had seemingly miraculously survived the centuries nearly intact.” (P. 99)
“In two small rooms Layard found stores of clay tablets inscribed all over with” various, “with curious Assyrian arrow-headed writing, which we now call cuneiform writing. Later, his assistant, Mr. Rassam, found another cache of these tablets. When scholars later found out how to read the inscriptions of the tablets, it was discovered that these clay tablets were really the books of the great royal library of the Assyrian kings.” (P. 100) And there were over 24 thousand cuneiform clay tablets found.
“The earliest of these cuneiform tablets was known as the “Royal Letters.” They “are reports (dated at 708)...” (p. 101). That’s important to remember that date, 708 and 707 B.C. The final conquering of the northern kingdom came with the fall of Samaria, the capital city, in 721, give or take a year. 721. This is only 13 years later, 14 years after Samaria fell.
“The reports from spies operating on the border of Assyria and Urartu. The spies were evidently sent there from the Assyrian monarch to watch and report on Urartian activities. It is from their reports that the activities of the Israelites can be found.” (P. 101)
Now, we’ll get into one of these actual reports. As we go through here, not necessary in this particular report, but there are fragments indecipherable chips out of the tablets, you know, like a drop or something like that, and they couldn’t read it. So there’s dot-dot-dots kind of places and sometimes that’ll be confusing, but don’t hang on those things, just let the whole thing wash over you. And the gestalt that we want to set in here is only that the Israelites are separate from the Urartians. They fought the Urartians. They were called the Gimira or the Gimira, and they lived in a certain area. That’s all we need to lock down here, but it’s really interesting to go through this thing step by step.
Letter no. 380. Let’s see. No, that’s not the one we want. We want 1079. “‘Letter 1079-Sennacherib to King Sargon’ is a letter from Sargon’s son.” Sennacherib was later. Sargon the second is the guy who conquered Samaria. Now, his son is out there collecting intelligence from the border guards and he’s writing a letter back, “evidently reporting an Urartian defeat in battle. Only the ending portion survives: .......... In the house........ I rejoiced (?), this is the report from Ashurrisua........-bel, the second officer of the palace overseer has come to me, saying, ‘Urzana has sent, saying, ‘The people of Urartu have set out (?).’” When they went............. his troops were slain, reporting that the governor of the city of Uesr is slain, saying, “The servants (?)..... have rebelled.” Are we not investigating..... When we have investigated...... we shall send you a report....... of the riding horses.......” and name. “The Urartians are fleeing, they are coming ..............of the house of the palace overseer.........” and some other stuff. (P. 107-111) Some kind of battle was happening there. Lot of troops were slain. Urartians are fleeing. Okay.
Here’s the next one. “Further details on the Urartian defeat.” 707 “(May 707 during the reign of Sargon) is contained in Letter 646.”
No, we have to do -- we have to do letter no. 2 first, yeah letter no. 2 first.
In the above letter, the one we just read, Sennacherib indicates he was “to gather details of the Urartian defeat and would send a further report. The following Letter, Letter 197-Sennacherib to King Sargon appears to be” that “follow-up report:” Long introductory paragraph here, “To the king, your servant. May it be well with you.” May it be well. May it be well. May it be well. All that stuff is good. “The people of the Ukkai have sent (word) unto me, saying, “When the king of the people of Urartu went to the land of Gamir,” sound familiar “his army met with a debacle, he himself and his district commanders with their contingents have been hurled back.’” (p. 111) There’s some other stuff. This is a long letter so I’m gonna skip down to another paragraph here. “Nabuli, the governor of Halsu has reported to me as follows: “Unto the garrisons of the fortified cities which command the border I sent the news of the king of Urartu. (They replied), saying, ‘When he went to the land of Gamir, his army (met) with a debacle. Three of his officers, together with their troops were slain. He himself escaped (and) entered his own land. His camp has not yet been attacked.’” (p. 111) And it goes on from there.
The actual name of Gamir, the land of Gamir – there’s a people named Gamir and they have a land and Urartu went against them and lost, “was hurled back.” Now, we know that Gamir quickly becomes Gimir, Gimira, Cimmerian, Kimmerioi in the Greek.
“Further details of the Urartian defeat (May 707 B.C.)” I like it. It’s so precise. “(during the reign of Sargon) is contained in ‘Letter 646'” The author of this one is unknown. And it starts out with a dot, dot, dot. “.....the people of Urartu....... they fear .......... for his hostility nine of his governors were slain.” (P. 111) And it goes on to name all nine of the governors. We’re not going to have the time to do that. The “total of nine” governors or the “ total of the nine of his governors have been slain and their king in his evil case has gone up by himself, he has fled to the mountains...... The remnant of their king they did not see.” (P. 115) Dadah da da dada. And it goes on from there.
The land of Gamir is up there in the territory of the Mannai. Mannai. Now, they were just south of Lake Urmia, south and a little bit east, almost toward the Caspian Sea. This area south of Lake Urmia and adjacent to Medea was referred to as the Land of Gamir was where a large number of the ten-tribed northern kingdom of Israel had been placed by the Assyrians. And just 14 years prior to the battle, some of these Israelites from the two-tribed kingdom of Judah had been settled in that area. Just 14 years. So that coincides with the final conquering of Samaria and the taking away of many of the Jews from the southern kingdom of Judah during the siege of Jerusalem by Sargon in 721 thereabouts.
“Sargon in his annals, says that he in invaded this area (719 B.C.)” this area up around Lake Urmia now. Lake Urmia. “...and deported many of the Mannai” who lived in that area, that was the area of the Mannai “to the west – to Syria,” which is directly on top of Palestine. (P. 115) Okay. If you go straight north from the Promised Land, then you get to Syria, small little area, country. Okay. Sargon and well, actually, his predecessor, Tiglath-Pileser and a couple of those other guys came down early and conquered Syria. They kept on going south and conquered the ten-tribed kingdom. Later on, Sargon conquered some people over in the Mannai area and transported them down to the vacancy that he created when he conquered the northern tribes of Israel. And this is what he’s saying in his own annals, he transported them to the west, to Syria.
“Evidently this created a sparsely populated area which the homeless Israelites would have filled. For self-preservation, the Israelites would have resisted the intrusion of the Urartians.” See. This vacuum is created. Mannai leaves and everybody wants to get in. Well, Urartians didn’t make it. “Thus proving the practicality of the Assyrian defensive strategy of placing captive peoples as buffers on the borders.” (P. 115) Buffers on the borders. Like that?
Let’s see what if we have this next one here. “‘Letter 112. The Arad-Sin to the Overseer of the Palace’ reveals the names of the inhabitants of Gamir as ‘Gamera’ and further identified them as ‘Cimmerians.’” (p. 115) This again is only a partial report even in the book. It’s only a partial report. “To the overseer of the palace my lord, your servant Arad-Sin. The Cimmerians” -- it comes right on to the Cimmerians, there isn’t a Gamera in any of that. “The Cimmerians went forth from the midst of the Mannai and into the land of Urartu they entered .... Ishtarduri...... the messenger of the governor of the city of Uesi went unto Urzani. Concerning .......... saying ............ the troops ...... let them come. The whole land of Urartu is exceedingly afraid on account of the people of the city of Bulia and the city of Suriana. They assemble the troops, saying, ‘Immediately our forces are like reeds, shall we plant (the foot) against him?’” And it goes on. He names the Cimmerians right there. In the captivity of the Israelites, the Israelites were known as the Gimira, and the Gamira and finally the Cimmerians. Although the Gimira were occupying part of the land of the Medes and the man Mannai, they were distinct people, distinct people. We’re gonna have to try to prove that too a little bit too.
PRAYER TABLETS
Another place where we get a lot of information is from the prayer tablets. The king would want to say a prayer, give a pray to the sun God, Shamash, and he’d have somebody write the prayer on a tablet, and he’d send it over to the priest, and the priest would do his trip with the prayer. Okay. And then he’d get an answer back. “The above prayer indicates that the Gimira were separate but had joined the Medes and the Mannai. Here’s what the prayer says. This is from a prayer of Esarhaddon. Esarhaddon – we mentioned him last week. “Will Kastariti, together with his warriors” – we don’t know who that is. Doesn’t make any difference -- “Or the warriors” – his warriors – “of the Gimira, or the warriors of the Medes, or the warriors of the Mannai, or any other enemy whatever, as many as there may be succeed in their plan?” to you know do bad things to us and Assyrian. (P. 117) He delineates four distinct groups and then throws a generic term in there, any other, to cover any people he forgot about. The warriors of Kastariti, Gimira, Medes, Mannai, and anybody else. Four distinct peoples. If they were the same, he would have named all four of them separately, you know.
“One tablet lists the Gimira and the Medes as also threatening the district of Bit-Hamban rather on the other southern shores of Media, adjoining Elam and Babylonian.” (P. 117) There’s a lot more. There’s a lot more. “Teushpa, the Gimiri, a barbarian.” This is a quote from Esarhaddon. Esarhaddon’s battle with the Cimmerians in the second reign year of his reign (679 B.C.) Here’s what he wrote, “Teushpa, the Gimira” that’s the person named, the Gimira. (P. 117) He’s a Gimiran. He’s an American. “Teushpa,” the American, “a barbarian whose home was afar off” significant “I cut down with the sword in the land of Hubushna, together with all his troops. Hubushna was the region in central Asia Minor, north and west of the Euphrates gorge, which one belonged to the Hittites... Habushna bordered on Urartu. The expression, “whose home was far off,” could easily be based on the knowledge that the Gimira were, in fact, exiles from their native land.” (P. 117) All right.
There’s another spy report, Letter no. 1237-- Belushezib. Belushezib. That’s a good one. “‘Belushezib to King Esarhaddon’ refers to the Gimira or Cimmerians as ‘offspring of outcasts’ also suggesting that they were strangers from another land.” (P. 119) “To the king of the lands my lord, your servant......... May Bell, and Nabu, and Shamash be gracious to the king my lord.” Skip down here to the middle paragraph. “Although the king sent (an order) to his troops as follows, ‘Enter into the midst of the Mannai,’ all the troops should not enter.’” (p. 119) Sending back advice to the king. “Let the cavalry and the Dakku invade the Cimmerians, who have spoken saying, ‘The Mannai pertain to you, we have not interfered.’ Certainly this is a lie. They are the offspring outcasts, they recognize neither the oath of a god nor a (human) agreement.” (P. 119) So the king, in other words, he said, get in there and fight with the Mannai. And this officer, this guy that’s sending back to him said, “Hey, wait a minute we better get in there, and go to the Cimmerians, too, because they said they would not have anything to do with this affair, but they’re lying and we know that. They’re lying through their teeth. Those rotten Cimmerians.”
Here’s another one. “An analysis of the texts of the Royal Letters leads only to the conclusion that the Gimira,” G-I-M-I-R-A, “were part of the Israelites lost in Assyrian exile.” (P. 120) “However, the Gimira people (identified by the Royal Letters) fail to account for the greater number of Israelites of the ten Northern tribes of Israel plus large numbers of the southern Kingdom of Judah carried away into Assyrian captivity. What happened to them? The answer to that question is found in the prayer tablets of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon. (P. 120)
“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.’” Of course, we heard of those. The Iskuza. “Among the prayer tablets or any Assyrian records, where the Gimira or the Iskuza are mentioned, they are never described as being distinctly different people. In fact the name ‘Iskuza’ can easily be deduce from the name “Isaac.” (The Israelites referred to themselves as House of Isaac before their exile.) Isaac could easily take the form of “Isaaca” which in turn became ‘Iskuza’ when the Assyrians heard it.” (P. 121) Additional, because there are no-- because the accent falls on the second syllable in the word Isaac, we say Isaac, and the first syllable gets the stress. But when they said it, the second syllable got the stress, and it was Ee-sahc. Isaac. See. So, Isaac is Isaac, Saka, the people of Sak, Sakka, Isaaka. And as it says here, Sakka is all over the Persian writings as we’ve discovered. Saka. Sakacene. It’s even spelled S-A-C in a lot of places. S-A-C-A-S-A-C-E-E-N. Sacaceen, okay, which very easily translates into Saxons, by the way.
“As the Medes stepped up their harassment of the border provinces of Assyrian, Esarhaddon proposed an alliance with the Iskuza (Scythian) king Bartatua” or Bartatua depending on which book you’re reading. Herodotus names this guy as Protothyes. Protothyes. P-R-O. Proto. T-H-Y-E-S. Protothyes. I don’t how to pronounce it. The alliance that was proposed was against the Medes and the Cimmerians. See. The Scythian’s own people. Israelites fighting against Israelites, you know. Well, to make a long story short, the Scythian king, the Iskuza king Bartatua demanded “a princess in marriage as the price for his allegiance,” and they went on that way for quite awhile. (P. 122) A lot of other tablets denote that.
“The Scythian alliance proved successful and lasted at least for another generation for Herodotus relates that a Scythian army under the command of Madyes, son of Protothyes (Bartatua) came to the relief of Nineveh. ‘A battle was fought in which the Medes’ under a king ‘were defeated and lost their power in Asia, which was taken over in its entirety by the Scythians.’” (P. 122) The Scythians were taken over. “Again,” in Herodotus, in “about 645 B.C.,” Madyes fought for the Assyrians, this time against the Cimmerians.” Okay. So they formed an alliance – these Iskuza people formed an alliance against the Gimira or the Gamira. Form an alliance with Assyria.
“It is universally accepted by modern historians that theists Iskuza were called ‘Schuthae’ by the Greeks.” (P. 122) The Iskuza were called Iskuza by the Assyrians, right. First, they got the Assyrian name of Iskuza. When we move over to the Medes, we hear them and the Persians, we here them called the-Sakka. Iskuza and Sakka. And the Greeks called them ‘Schuthae,’ which is where we get Scythians. Scythians. Schuthae. And like I said before, it’s just a short hop to Saxons and even a shorter hop to Scots. From Iskuza, Scythae to Scott.
“Herodotus further tells us the Persians called the Sacae,” S-A-C-A-E, “Scythians.’” (p. 122) They weren’t the only ones who call them Scythians. “The name ‘Gimira’ was strictly an Assyrian name and not” one of the Israelites’ names. (P. 122) Okay. They never used that name.
“To summarize, we have observed from the Assyrian documents (tablets and inscriptions) that the Israelites were called ‘Khumri’ or ‘Khormi’ by the Assyrians before their captivity. However, after the reign of Sargon II (721 to 705 B.C.) that name is never mentioned again. Then, around 707 B.C., a people known as the ‘Gimira’ and the ‘Gamera’ are recorded as living among the Mannai. Their territory was only a few miles from the Medes, in the very areas where the Scriptures state that the northern ten-tribed Kingdom of Israel” had been found, “had been placed,” rather, “just a few years previously.” (p. 122-123)
“We have noted that the names, ‘Gimir,’ ‘Gimira,’ and ‘Gamera’ could easily be corruptions of ‘Khumri’ or ‘Khomri,’ the Assyrian names for the Israelites. The names ‘Sacae’ or ‘Sakka’ (Scythians) are probably derived from ‘Isaaca’ or ‘house of Isaac.’ It is further noted that the Assyrian name ‘ga-me-ra-a-a,’ G-A-M-E-R-A-A-A, “is translated into ‘Cimmerian.’... Although the belief (based on biblical and historical records) that the Scythians and the Cimmerians are descendants of the ‘Lost Tribes’ of Israel has been held by some Bible scholars for many years, archeological evidence had been lacking.” (p. 123) A lot of people figured that out a long time ago, okay, but without any concrete evidence -- even with concrete evidence, people don’t want – – traditional Christian don’t even want to here about this lost tribes stuff. I get shut down every time I get start talking about it. “Well, so what?” They don’t want to here about it. Okay.
Let’s get on. But “that is no longer the case.” Factual evidence is now available. Sit down and look at it in your own hands. “The clay cuneiform” tablets, the ‘letters’ found in Ashurbanipal’s royal library at Kiyunjik are the ‘missing links’ connecting the Israelites to the people of” northwest Europe and “Western Europe and America” –that’s important, America “who trace their roots to the Scythians and the Cimmerians.”
“It can now truly be said - archaeology has solved two great mysteries, both occurring at the same time in history: 1. What happened to the countless thousands of Israelites that ‘disappeared’ into the Assyrian Captivity? 2. Where did the countless thousands of Scythians and Cimmerians come from?” which all of a sudden appeared on the face of history. “Both mysteries are no longer in existence. The so-called “Lost Tribes” of Israel were never really lost. They only lost their identity during their captivity in Assyria.” (P. 123)
And I think it’s extremely interesting how all these different groups of – You talk of civil war. You got here not just the north against the south, okay. You got the Cimmerians and the Scythians or the Gimira and the Iskuza that break into all these different tribes and at some times, the tribes are fighting against each other, not just north and south, but maybe state against state. We got Texas. We got Idaho, and we got Kansas against Maine and. It gets ridiculous, see, but it’s really interesting how these guys go at each other and couple of hundred years go by, and it seems nobody has any -- they don’t care whether they came from the same stock. They don’t care whether 300 years ago, they were all one nation down there or whatever it was. They just go along, you know, fighting each other and they –
One of the other great examples of that is that all the invasions, all the different invasions of England, of the Isle, the British Isles. Right. And every one of those invasions that we have recorded throughout history -- every single one of those invasion is by another group of people out of the main stock of the ten tribes of Israel. The Normans were out of the ten tribes. The Saxons were out of the ten tribes. The Picts -- all of those guys, the Danes. Everyone of them. It’s all just wave after wave of Israelites coming down and settling down in England and all of northwest Europe. It’s really wonderful. See, the Scythians -- they fought against the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians moved out of the area and a couple of hundred years later, they moved back into the area to the a little bit to the west and south of the Black Sea and re-conquered the area as a different group of people, named of the Cimbri and took over the old place again.
The Sarmatians pushed the Scythians out, but who were they? We talked a little bit about those last week. Over the top of the Caspian Sea north of the Caspian Sea appears this group of people called the Sarmatians, S-A-R-M-A-T-I-A-N-S. And they’re strong enough to push a wedge through the center of the Scythian kingdom -- there really wasn’t a kingdom, it was just this big loose geographical area they pushed this wedge in there and drove the Scythians north up to the Baltic and the North Sea and down around the Black Sea, and they pushed out the Cimmerians. But these Sarmatians who were they?
Now, let’s see what E. Raymond Capt has to say about the Sarmatians. “The Sarmatians were first mentioned by ancient historian in the 5th century B.C. under the name of ‘Saurmatae.’” (p. 168-169) Okay. The hoard of Sauro- whatever, just like the Massagetae. Okay. “Herodotus mentioned that the Sarmatians ‘use the Scythians language, speaking it corruptly.’” (p. 169) The Scythian language. They got the same language. Well, the English, I’m sure, would say that we’ve totally corrupted English, see. We’ve only been gone for 200 years, see. Nice little tie-in.
Here’s another tie-in, “their wives,” Sarmatians, “retained the ‘ancient Amazon’ mode of living, joining their husbands in the hunt and in war, and wearing the same dress as the men.” (P. 169) The stories of Celtic history are rife with the women coming out and fighting right next to their men. The Roman legions were put off by that. They made them stop and think a whole lot. Here comes this – not only this did this naked Celtic with the long flowing red hair jump out of the woods and challenge the whole legion to a fight, his wife comes out next to him and does the same thing, you see. Not supposed to do that. These guys did it. Sarmatians did it.
“In 338 B.C, the Sarmatians had crossed the Don regions and engaged in battles with the Scythians who occupying the regions west of the Don River.” (P. 169) And they pushed, they wandered westward by the advancing Sarmatians. “By 300 B.C., the Sarmatians controlled the whole of the area between the Don and the Dnieper Rivers. Soon after 300 B.C, the Sarmatians advanced from the Dnieper to the Carpathians” way over the top of the Black Sea, way over the top. They just cut a line through the whole Scythian area “and finally into what is known as Hungary. The Scythians, again pushed westward, divided into northern and southern groups. The latter,” the southern group “were ultimately driven into two pockets, one in the islands of the Danube delta, the other in the Crimea area where they were forced to pay tribute to the Sarmatians.” (P. 169-170)
Well, it looks to me like these Sarmatians are really a group of people we looked at last week. The larger – and we brushed on it this week – the very large group of Sakas of the whole people of the Sakas, the largest group, moved under the Caspian Sea and in a second wave of Sakas and went east to the Caspian and then north. They were called the Massagetae, you remember, the large group of Sakas. The first guys that went out, the early settlers that crossed the country in the early 1800's in the wagon trains, they were the Saka that came out first and settled in Bactria and a couple of those places. Then when the roads got opened and the railroads were built and everything, then the hoards started coming. See. The big westward movement.
Only in this case, it was eastward, and then they moved north around the east border of the Caspian Sea and just exactly at the right time these people called the Sarmatians appear above the Caspian Sea and move west again into the area of the Scythians.
And somewhere – I have come across in my reading – the fact that large groups of people from the northern ten tribes of Israel called themselves Samarians after the capital. The tribe I know for sure is called in the Bible over and over again Samaria, Ephraim, house of Joseph, house of this, house of that, house of the other thing, but Samaria is one of the words. And it’s very, very a short distance between Samaria and Samarians to Sarmatians. That easily corrupts.
So it looks like to me that they’re just following the old pattern of their countrymen you know just fighting the war of the brothers, fighting the war, you know. Sibling rivalry. Haven’t thought about it much like that before. But when you gestalt the whole picture of all the tribes, you see the twelve sons of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel, the twelve sons-of-Israel, the patriarchs of the twelve tribes giving into their squabbles you know in their daily lives. Well this is just on a grand historical scale over hundreds of years where they fight each other and keep on fighting each other. It’s a wonder to me that the ten tribes of Israel have turned out to be such a large population group, fighting amongst themselves like they have over these thousands of years. The French and the English fought all the time you know. They’re all from the same you know they’re all from Israel. Spaniards you know all the people that we fought all through the ages.
Now, can there be any doubt that the house of Israel became the Gimira, the Iskuza and the Saka? Can there be any doubt? Can there be any doubt that the Gimira and the Iskuza and the Saka became the Cimmerians or the Scythians? Can there additionally be any doubt that the Cimmerians and the Scythians became the Celtic nations of northwest Europe? In light of all this evidence, how can there possibly be there any doubt?
And yet I know that I feel the vibration that says, “Well, well, maybe you know maybe.” A big heavy grudge going along with the acceptance of the thing. Why is that? Why is that? Well, at Straight Talk, we’re studying this same material on a lot more detail if you’d like to come around on Monday nights and study. We meet at 7 o’clock on Monday night.
Next week, I want to go into the way that tradition history presents these same people and the confusion that’s fostered by that view. I’m telling you it’s just like they never heard of any this and yet all the research that I come across and that I read and I do is right there and it’s been there all this time. Herodotus didn’t just all of a sudden surface 25 years ago. Well, any way next week we’ll try to trace some of those biblical prophecies that mark the Celts of Europe, so tune in and stretch with Jack on history and philosophy of the Bible. Goodbye.
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