Henry T. Aubin - The Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance Between Hebrews and Africans in 701 BC

HENRY TROCM AUBIN

THE
RESCUE
of
JERUSALEM

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN
HEBREWS AND AFRICANS IN 701 BC

Title page illustration is a relief

from the palace of Sargon, Khorsabad.

Copyright 2002 by Henry Trocm Aubin.

All rights reserved.

Published by Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

www.sohopress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicaiton Data

Aubin, Henry, 1942

The rescue of Jerusalem : the alliance between Hebrews and

Africans in 701 BC / by Henry Trocm Aubin.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.

ISBN 1-56947-275-0 (alk. paper)

1. Middle EastHistoryTo 622.

2. JerusalemHistorySiege, 701 B.C.

3. EgyptHistoryTo 332 B.C.

4. NubiaHistory. 5. AssyriaHistory.

6. Bible. O.T.History of Biblical events.

I. Title.

DS62.23 .693 2002

933dc21 2001-49670

To the memory of my uncle

DANIEL TROCM

19121944

Arrested by the Gestapo in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, he died at the
Maidanek concentration camp in Poland. He is honored
at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem
as a righteous gentile.

And to

PENNY

joy of my life,

without whom this book would not exist.

and

NICOLAS, NISHI, RAPHALLE and SETH,

for whose generation, and the next,

its meant.

CONTENTS

I TS BECAUSE OF happenstance that, long after leaving university, I became interested in ancient history. When I had children in Sunday school in the mid-1980s, Julie Dawson, an active member of St. Andrews-Dominion-Douglas United Church, Montreal, tried to recruit me to become a teacher. She chuckled at my excuse that I knew nothing about biblical stories, said it would be fun to discover them and, by amiably dragooning me, exposed me to the intellectual challenge of the great code, as Northrop Frye called the Old Testament. That opened the door for me to the ancient world in general. Im grateful to the persistent Ms. Dawson.

During the years of preparing this book, greatly appreciated encouragement has come from numerous friends and kin, including Catherine Aubin, Janet Cheasley, Steve Cheasley, William Edgar, Josey Grossman Fisher, David McLauchlin, Antoine Maloney, Genevive Martin-Trocm, Edmund Sears Morgan, Marie Morgan and Robin Palin. I thank them all. For his wizardry in averting a computer disaster, I am indebted to Jean-Claude Lachapelle. Newspaper colleagues have been generous with their talentJustin Stahlman in devising the map, Jeff Heinrich in translating a German text and Rob Ramsey, Andrea Shepherd and Tim Simpson with computer know-how. I am also thankful for help from McGill University library staff including Maria De Souza, Elizabeth Dunkley, Klaus Fiedler, Elizabeth Gibson, Marc Richard, Janice Simpkins, and Francisco Uribe. At the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, librarian Ronald Finegold also provided superb help.

I owe much to the kindness of academic specialists. Donna Runnalls and Barry Levy, past and present deans of McGills Faculty of Religious Studies, looked at an embryonic draft of the book in 1993 and assured me that the subject was worth pursuing. Sheila McDonough, professor emeritus of religion at Concordia University, read an intermediate draft and made splendid suggestions. Professor Eugene Orenstein, a specialist at McGill on the Zionist movement, kindly reviewed Chapter 20.

I am particularly grateful to three scholars whose works were among the most astute and insightful encountered during my research. Despite not knowing who I was, and despite my lack of academic credentials, Ronald E. Clements, William H. McNeill and Bruce G. Trigger each showed extraordinary generosity of spirit in reading my manuscript in its entirety and offered useful suggestions and encouragement. Any errors in the book are, of course, my own doing.

In the publishing world, certain individuals have provided the manuscript with the caring professionalism that I thought only existed in authors fantasies. For the dedication of my literary agent, Beverley Slopen, for the belief in the book shown by publisher and editor Juri Jurjevics and associate publisher Laura M. C. Hruska at Soho, and for the meticulous care of editor Meg Taylor at Doubleday Canada, I am profoundly thankful.

This book has been a real projet de famille. In addition to providing the inspiration for it, our childrenNick, Nishi, Raphalle and Sethhave been an ongoing source of strong support. To my wife, Penelope, my gratitude is boundless. She, too, has become fascinated with Kushite civilization, and in doing separate research on its linguistic aspects. She has pointed me to many pertinent books, helped me with various texts in Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek and acted as a sounding board and tireless editor. We have spent hundreds of pleasant weekends sharing the dining-room table, with sleeping cats establishing the boundary between our respective stacks of papers and index cards. A more companionable sort of research is hard to imagine.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE
KUSHITE - ASSYRIAN
STRUGGLE

BC

734 Assyria (under Tiglath-pileser III) invades Philistia and advances as far as the Egyptian border.

c. 734 Israel and Syria fail in their attempt to conquer Judah.

733-2 Assyria (under Tiglath-pileser) campaigns in Philistia and appoints an Arab tribe as guardian of the Egyptian border area. It also conquers Damascus and Israel.

c. 728 Kush (under Piye) conquers Lower Egypt,

then withdraws.

726-5 Israel (under Hoshea) rebels against Assyria and appeals in vain to So, king of Egypt for military aid.

723-2 Assyria (under Shalmaneser V) conquers Israels capital, Samaria.

720 Assyria (under Sargon II) destroys what remains of Israel and starts deporting its leadership class. Assyria also advances to Gaza and to the border of Egypt.

716 Assyria (under Sargon) campaigns at least as far as the Egyptian border and possibly into Egypts territory.

712 Assyria (under Sargon) crushes rebellion by the Philistine city of Ashdod.

c. 712 Kush (under Shabako) reconquers all of Egypt.

701 Assyria (under Sennacherib) invades rebellious

Phoenicia, Philistia and Judah. Kushite Egypt (probably under joint rule of pharaohs Shabako and Shebitku) confronts the Assyrians before they can seize Jerusalem.

679 Assyria (under Esarhaddon) campaigns in Philistia and Judah for the first time in 22 years. It advances to Egypts border.

677 Assyria (under Esarhaddon) again invades Philistia.

674 Assyria (under Esarhaddon) tries to invade Egypt and is defeated by Kushite- Egyptian forces under Taharqa.

671 Assyria (under Esarhaddon) invades Egypt, routs Taharqa without capturing him and deports his family to Nineveh.

667 Assyria (under Assurbanipal) responds to Taharqas reestablishment of his rule over Egypt by invading the country. It conquers Thebes and drives Taharqa south.

664 Taharqa dies and is succeeded as pharaoh of the 25th Dynasty by his kinsman Tanwetamani. Meanwhile, Assyria establishes the rival 26th Dynasty.

663 Assyria (under Assurbanipal) pillages Thebes and drives the Kushites from Egypt permanently.

622 Scroll of Deuteronomy is said to be discovered in Jerusalem during reign of Josiah.