Here’s a piece of history that was stolen from all of us.
In previous posts, I have mentioned that there is physical evidence from Sumerian tablets that proves Abraham lived, that he lived in Ur as the Bible says, that he flourished about 1996 B.C., which fits the timeline, and that he left with his people. And that evidence was from a book published by Yale University Press, but not distributed for public use – scholars eyes only, in the 1920’s.
I still keep seeing posts on the internet that claim that there is no extra-biblical evidence for Abraham, Moses, or most of the others mentioned in the Bible. I took two hours out of my schedule today so that I could offer physical evidence of the existence of Moses.
The Moses of Biblical fame was said to have liberated the Hebrew slaves from Egyptian custody. He was a rebel, he fought the powers that be, and he brought them out of bondage.
On many occasions we find modern Jewish people using the same names over and over, especially when they are the names of patriarchs. But we see the same thing in Christian families as well, with John, James, Luke, Mark, Matthew, etc., in the names of our children. And when one of those names was of an earlier personage who was known to have been a slave, who fought for his people, and who worshiped one god as well, we probably should pay it greater attention.
You have not seen this elsewhere, although all of the Sumerian scholars of the past two hundred years and modern scholars today have seen the same things that I ran across, but have never decided to mention them to us.
There are over 20 tablets in the Sumerian collection at UCLA that mention Moses, so let’s get started on just a few examples. Twenty pieces of physical evidence in the form of written statements should be sufficient proof, right? I have included six of those below. The rest may be seen by simply doing a search of the UCLA collection of early Sumerian tablets with the search phrase “mu ses”. Actually the “ses” part has markings on it, and those marks above the “s” are difficult to print using today’s fonts, so UCLA uses the phrase mu szesz , and that should be your search term.
All of these were written during the reigns of Ibbi-Sin or Shu-Sin, his father, both of whom were kings of Sumer and Akkad during the UR III dynasty that lasted until 2004 B.C.
This was also the time period in which Abraham flourished, so the stories would have been current with he and his tribe. It turns out that Moses, or Mu-ses, was formerly a rebel in the area of modern Syria, who was taken as a slave by the Sumerians and who was constantly instigating his people to throw off their bonds of slavery. They eventually did, with the result that shortly after (five years) this was written the Amorite relatives of Abraham and Moses, along with their Elamites and Gutian allies, overthrew Sumeria and it ceased to exist as a civilization after that time. This new rule is what we now refer to as the Babylonian period.
The Sumerians wrote his name using their characters as Mu-ses because they had no letter “o” in their language, but in any event their “mu” means “name, son, ancestor” and “ses” means both “to be bitter” and “to anoint”, which probably is a result of his being bitter trouble for them but anointed by his tribes. He very probably was also anointed as a priest of their sky-god UTU, god of the Sun. (One god was what he worshiped – not many gods, by the way).
On these tablet examples we find the reports of the king of Sumeria complaining about the rebel factions that he had to put down, violently, and bring back as slaves, in order to secure his reign of the empire. He probably should have put them to death instead, but then history would have been quite different.
I wrote my summaries of the translation in UPPER CASE in order to set them out from the rest of the text. I hope you don’t mind – I mean no offense by doing it that way. I’m not shouting at you, and I probably will not do it again in the future. Maybe.
Here are the tablets:
[1] (P499732) [You can do a search at UCLA online for tablet P499732 and the rest mentioned below as sources, and you will find the transliterations. Then you just need to do the translation, as I have done for you here.]
Primary Publication: Studevent-Hickman, Benjamin (2018) JCSSS 5, 012
Collection: National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq
Provenience: Du-Enlila (mod. uncertain)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
Object Type: tablet Material: clay
Date: Ibbi-Suen.02.03.00, Ibbi-Suen.02.05.00
Here is line nine from this first tablet:
9. kiszib3 ARAD2-mu szesz lu2 -[su4]
And my translation, word for word:
kišib3 ED IIIa, “cylinder seal; sealed tablet”
arad2 ED IIIa, “slave, servant”
Mu-Ses , a name, but can also be broken down into:
mu = name, line of text, son, ancestors
szesz = to be bitter, brackish OR to anoint, OR to weep (as slaves)
lu2 ED IIIa, “(to be) abundant; to heap up”
su4 ED IIIa, “(to be) red, brown”
Which gives us:
ON A SEALED TABLET, THE SLAVE MU-SES, OF THE ABUNDANT RED/BROWN ONES
Not very complementary, but here the Sumerians were acknowledging that, as found on sealed tablets (official documents of a secret nature were sealed), mentions of the slave Mu-Ses, he of the horde of red-brown ones, [a racial slur indicating the skin color of the Syrian group in ancient times]. This may also be the first evidence of white-supremacy since the Sumerians are held by many scholars to have been Caucasians, and related to the people of the southern Caucasus region near Russia. Please don’t get caught up in that whole “black-headed” people that our scholars try to sell – that is very incorrect as I will show in a later post. They really were not dull enough to call themselves the black heads, and were probably not all black-headed in any event. Although our scholars do a good job of selling that idea when they show you the kings of Sumeria carved in black stone – and claim that supports “black heads”. Sure. Well, at least the stones were black.
—————————————————-
[2] (P376179)
Provenience: Umma (mod. Tell Jokha)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
Line 24. 1(disz) i3-du10-ga dumu ur-saga mu szesz ulu3-di engar-<sze3>
One is a unit, such as one ton, one barrel, one heavy weight, etc.
i3 “oil, butter; container for oil”
du10 “(to be) good; (to be) sweet;”
ga “to bring, carry”
dumu “child, son, daughter”
UR = city in Sumeria
saga “(compound noun nominal element)”
Mu-Ses
ulu3 “south wind; south; a demon”
di “to speak”
engar “farmer; an agricultural manager”
šeg “to take away, seize”
BUTTER OR OIL OF GOOD QUALITY WAS BROUGHT BY A CHILD, A FEMALE SALE, OF THE TRIBE OF MU-SES, THAT DEMON FARMER WHO WAS SEIZED.
He may have been a Demon, a trouble-maker to the Sumerians, and so he was seized and brought back to Sumeria as a slave, but he probably could not have been killed without his tribal family rising up against the Sumerians – they didn’t want to make a martyr of him.
—————————————————-
[3] P368705 Starting with this one I am providing the translations only, since this would soon become book size if I kept on the way I started.
Provenience: Girsu (mod. Tello)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
column 3
4. {d}utu-mu szesz sanga uru11{ki#}
BTW – speaking of stolen history, in both of these lines our traditional scholars added the word ki in brackets – indicating that it was not a part of the tablet itself but was added or edited because they “thought” that the word sowed needed the word ki, meaning land, to make sense. Actually it doesn’t need it at all, since it means “sowed the seeds of rebellion”.
IN THE LAND OF THE DEITY UTU (THE SUN GOD) MU-SES THE OVERSEER SOWED
column 4
6. giri3 {d}utu-mu szesz sanga uru11{ki}
UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE DEITY UTU (THE SUN GOD), MU-SES THE OVERSEER SOWED.
When the Sumerians speak of the land of UTU, who was their Sun god, generally this indicates the lands where the sun sets, or the West, which fits with modern Syria. When they speak of
Mu-Ses as “sowed”, they mean he sowed the seeds of discontent among his followers. And when we see that Mu-Ses the overseer sowed under the authority of the Sun god, this indicates that he was now an overseer of agricultural lands which his fellow tribesmen were working as slaves, and that he was a priest of their Sun god, which they called Shamesh and the Sumerians called UTU. So a priest, a rebel, and a leader of his people, but now a slave like the rest of the ones that survived. Apparently Mu-Ses and his people were monotheistic.
—————————————————-
[4] P108466
Provenience: Girsu (mod. Tello)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
Date: Šulgi 44
4. ki {d}utu-mu szesz sanga uru11{ki}-ta
IN THE LAND OF THE DEITY UTU (THE SUN GOD), MU-SES THE OVERSEER, SOWED WHAT?
Not much of a riddle if you lived in Sumeria – he sowed trouble, discontent, anarchy. In their opinion that is.
————————————–
[5] P108472
Collection: British Museum, London, UK
Museum no.: BM 021335
Provenience: Girsu (mod. Tello)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
12. ARAD2-mu szesz nin9-kal-la
THE SLAVE MU-SES HAD A SISTER WHO WAS CONCERNED WITH OR
RESPECTED AS VALUABLE, IN REGARD TO WEIGHING OUT/HANGING A WEIGHT BALANCE,
AND PAYING OUT OR SUPERVISING THE PAYMENT FOR GOODS.
————————————–
[6] P130385
Provenience: Girsu (mod. Tello)
Period: Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)
16. nig2-ka9-ak {d}utu-mu szesz sanga uru11{ki}
THE ACCOUNTS OF DEEDS PERFORMED BY THE DEITY UTU (THE SUN GOD),
MU-SES THE OVERSEER SOWED.
This is further evidence that Mu-Ses (Moses) not only worshiped the Sun god UTU, he extolled his virtues among his fellow slaves from the western lands of modern Syria. Most of these would be either former Akkadians, Assyrians, Amorites, Mari or Eblaites.
Apparently he was not only a rebel and a trouble maker, but he was running around preaching the one-god theory to his fellow slaves. And please remember, that five years after these were written he and those same slaves rose up and took complete control of Sumeria, bringing that group of people to an end.
———————————————
Is it any wonder that, some one hundred and fifty years later (or so), another Hebrew named after this rebel, who also believed in the idea of one god (although a different one to be sure), led his people out of slavery after causing a great deal of trouble for the ruling party?
Can we still say that there is no extra-biblical mentions of Moses? I think not.
Can somebody please show this to their religious leader so the word can get out and eventually the scholars will pick it up and make some changes, so that I don’t have to see their denials of Biblical patriarchs on my web surfs? Thank you.