The god of Elkenah in Hieroglyphs and in the Book of Abraham

I

We are not coming to terms with the Pearl of Great Price as we might, unless by its study we also magnify our view of the ancients and, thereby, open "astonishing paths" of discovery (see Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 2). By reading the scriptures, we can come to see things as they once really were.

The Book of Abraham introduces the surprised reader to a hitherto unknown god, the "god of Elkenah," and to his priest, who meets Abraham at an altar of sacrifice.

Might the name Elkenah be found in Egyptian hieroglyphs? his image appear on a pharaonic stele? Yes and yes.

Is the name authentic? Hugh Nibley, writing in 1969, sorts through evidence for the name Elkenah (or, as variously spelled, Elkkener, Elkkeenah), and mulls over its several possible meanings in both Canaanite and Egyptian (Improvement Era, August 1969 = An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 313-319; cf. also John Gee, Stephen D. Ricks, "Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study," in Paul Y. Hoskisson, ed., Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, BYU, 2001).

More recently, Kevin Barney has drawn up a thorough brief for Elkenah. Among plausible solutions he reconsiders the well-known Canaanite god, El qny; he also discusses the Hittite-Hurrian spelling of El qny in the form Elkunirsha (qny 'rs, Creator of the earth). Even so, Kevin Barney cannot decide whether Elkenah should take the q or the k. Is Elkenah to be understood as El qenah (El the Possessor or Creator) or is he El kan'a (El of Canaan)? (Kevin L. Barney, "On Elkenah as Canaanite El," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19/1 (2010), 22-35.) Hugh Nibley saw in Elkkenner a spelling, however bizarre in Roman letters, indicative of Semitic /q/.

Elkenah is an authentic name; a touch of the genuine may well be found on a Syrian stele commemorating Ramesses the Great, the Bashan stele, first identified in 1884. Because locals saw in the stone a seat for ancient Job, students tag the stele the "Job stone." Soon it will be better known as a New Kingdom reflection of Abraham's milieu. 


II

The Bashan Stele of Ramesses II shows us how the Pearl of Great Price may help in puzzle-solving. 

(For bibliography see K.A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, II 223, 6;  for both bibliography and discussion, see also James Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 327; Izak Cornelius, The Iconography of the Canaanite Gods Reshef and Ba'al: Late Bronze and Iron Age I Periods (c 1500-1000 BCE, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 140 (1994), page 145.)

In the weathered depictions and engravings on the 2 meter basalt stele, we first note the name and image of Ramesses the Great. Ramesses, sporting the blue crown, lifts the image of the goddess Ma'at, sitting in a basket, to a divinity crowned with the Osirian Atef--but this is not Osiris. The Atef crown, "in this case, in relation to this subject" (to borrow a line from Joseph Smith), uncharacteristically sports a long, curved horn (a bull's horn?), maybe two horns. An accompanying label, in the special syllabic "group writing" used for Semitic words, gives the divinity's name.

The first signs spell the Canaanite name for their high god, El, or Ilu; then come the outstretched arms, which customarily write the syllable k3 and, presumably, in group writing, ku or ko; next comes n and signs likely expressing the vowel -ah. The following segment, also in group writing, yields Dapuna, which is Mount Zaphon, the Levantine Olympus. We thus have, at least graphemically, El k-n-a Zaphon.

The exact lexemic reading of the name has never been settled.

James Hoch suggests El Kolia, God the Restrainer, and--to be sure--the n-grapheme can sometimes be read as l. Yet no other attestation of El Kolia appears anywhere. Both Giveon and de Moor read: jr k3nj D3p3n, "Canaanite 'l kn tspn," which means Ilu, Creator of Zaphon, Ilu Founder of Zaphon, or Ilu, Possessor of Zaphon). As everyone notes, the k3 or k doesn't match the q sign. But what of the Hurrian-Hittite divine name, El Kunirsha (Ilu, Possessor or Creator of the earth)? El Kunirsha matches El qny, though written with a k--by way of the cuneiform sign ku. With this last name in mind, De Moor asserts: "The inscription runs i-r3-k3-n-i D3-p3-n and should be interpreted as 'il qny tsaphon El the Creator of the Zaphon" (Johannes C. de Moor, "Ugarit and Israelite Origins," 217-18, in Congress Volume Paris 1992, ed., J.A. Everton). Has Abraham trespassed upon the demesne of El Kunirsha?

We await more evidence before settling on El qny for the Ramesses stele. Still, given 1) the fact of discovery in Syria, 2) the egyptianizing crown of the Canaanite divinity, and 3) a name attesting El with attribute k-n-a (whatever that sequence of graphemes may signify); any reader of the Book of Abraham will exclaim: Abraham Chapter One, the god of Elkenah!

Again, it is not so much an aggregation of evidence for the Book of Abraham that concerns us here, as it is reading the book to elucidate the ancients: to resolve questions, puzzles, mysteries. Can Abraham's record contribute to our understanding of puzzles like the Bashan stele? That is the question.

While we may not yet opt for any particular reading, there is no difficulty in positing il k-n-a, or even the transcription Elkenah Zaphon (or Elkunah/Elkonah). The name, here, could either mean, as some have it, God (El), the Creator or Owner (qny, qnh) of Zaphon (the mountain shrine of the Canaanites), or as that particular Elkenah who is worshipped at Zaphon.

III

Potiphar's Hill at the head of the plain of Olishem reflects lofty, even celestial, Zaphon. According to Hugh Nibley, 'ly shm, signifies "Height of Heaven." Is the Potiphar's Hill of Elkenah to be equated with El q-n-a's Zaphon? According to de Moor, the record does attest local versions of Zaphon, all reflections of that first and foremost Zaphon, which is itself but a palatial reflection of the heavenly height. Might Dapuna (cf. Abraham's Libnah or Zibnah) be, in fact, the "god" who is named the god of Elkenah at the local Potiphar's Hill? More to the point, is it not Ba'al Zaphon (the Owner or Master of Zaphon) who is the god of El Kenah Zaphon? Each rivals, twins, usurps the other: Gog and Magog. Is the priest of Elkenah, a stand-in for the priest of Pharaoh, says Abraham, also a stand-in for the priest-king who offers to El q-n-a at Dapuna? a Dapuna now transferred to the local hilltop at Bashan? Hilltops, mountains, Dapuna, Zibnah, Zaphon, Bashan, Olishem, Potiphar's Hill--all these congregate about Elkenah.

Professor de Moor further explains: "The Job-stele implies that according to the local mythology [shall we add, the local ceremonial?] El had dispossessed Baal of his mountain Zaphon [qny = to possess, own]. Where the stone was erected had apparently been re-named 'Zaphon.' Wandering of geographic names is a common phenomenon" (217-218). For instance, the name of Mount Moriah, where Abraham offers his son, Isaac, transfers onto Mount Zion, which itself comes to bear the name Zaphon (Psalm 48:3); "a promontory in the sea near Lake Serbonis" (the Egyptian Delta) also becomes Zaphon (218). 

Zaphon in Canaan--yes. But in Egypt? Canaanite El, wrought in bronze and wearing Osiris' Atef crown, ubiquitously appears in the Ancient Levant--and in smiting pose. As with the god, so with the priest: the priest of Elkenah, that is, the priest of Pharaoh, stretches forth his hand to smite Abraham on the altar. What Abraham Chapter One describes is a ritual combat, the combat at world's creation for the possession of the earth, the seas, the mountains, the netherworld, etc. Possession is an act of victory: The winner takes all. The left-hand panels on Book of Abraham Facsimile Two--the Egyptian hypocephalus--with full accord, also invoke the all-victorious cosmocrator that rules by right of possession (nb) in heaven, earth, Duat, Nun, and mountain. Potiphar's Hill, like Zaphon for Ba'al or Ilu, becomes the locus of Victory. If I read my Nibley and the Book of Abraham rightly, the combat being played out features Sirius and the Sun, rivals for cosmic rule that ultimately collapse into one divine power ("the god of Shagreel, who is the sun"). Elkenah, who, at essence, merges with the Egyptian Sun, is the victor, whether on cosmic mountain or at local hill. Yet it is ultimately Abraham's God who wins the battle and takes possession. And what of Mount Moriah? 

And what of Bashan? Here we meet "not the weak, old god who is on the verge of surrendering his position to Baal of Zaphon" but "an El who sought to oust Baal," even "a contender for the position of supreme god" (de Moor, 218). The upstart Aten contends against the same adversary, according to a letter sent to Pharaoh by the king of Tyre (218). And the Sun-qua-Aten brings us back to Heliopolis. "Egyptian ritual and literature," says Nibley, "often give us fleeting glimpses of the setup at On." Thus at On (Heliopolis) "the false pretender from the south is 'cast down from upon the hill on the east of On' to sink into the waters of death at its foot" (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 412). Joseph Smith, in his explanation of Facsimile One, notes these same waters below the sacrificial altar, and in which swims the hungry crocodile awaiting his prey--even "the idolatrous god of Pharaoh." A watery death lurks below; then--croc and hawk--"like a thunderbolt he falls!" from "on high," even from the "heavens"--as Joseph Smith's interprets the waters "in this case, in relation to this subject." Death from on high? from the waters? and like a crocodile in sudden splash and flash? In the likeness of Abraham Chapter One, where the priest of Elkenah "was smitten that he died," we find Hadrian in AD 129 sacrificing at Zaphon. And "when he sacrificed, a storm came up and lightning struck both victim and officiant" (John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas I). And Hadrian prevailed.

The priest of Elkenah, with glittering knife, thus comes to us in the likeness of the god with the thunderbolt: Baal, Zeus, Indra. Assuming that rescuing role of bringer of the regenerative rains, he both draws the lightning and, at once, stands apart from danger.

According to John Pairman Brown, the idea of Zaphon, as translated to its various appointed localities, is that of victory over the waters (and thus also victory over drought), a victory represented as being over the sea monster, monster waves, and, indeed, the crocodile. Thus the victory over Pharaoh at the crossing of the Red Sea also takes place in the vicinity of Baal-Zaphon, i.e., Mount Kasios (John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas I, "Excursus B: The god of Kasios and his adversary"). Note again how there is more than one Mount Kasios = Zaphon, each associated with Baal-Zaphon and the victory over the waters.



IV

Hugh Nibley often refers to Moses 1:25 and its theme of kingly victory over the cosmic waters: 

And he heard a voice saying: Blessed art thou, Moses, for I, the Almighty, have chosen thee, and thou shalt be made stronger than many waters; for they shall obey thy command as if thou wert God.

The manuscript copy of Moses 1:25 reads more precisely and more Hebraically: 

thou shall be made stronger than the many waters for they shall obey thy command even as if thou wert God

(Joseph Smith Papers, Documents I:55; cf. Doctrine and Covenants 21:4-6)

Joseph Smith Translation Old Testament Manuscript 2 clarifies what it means to speak for God:

for they shall obey thy command even as my commandments

(cited in Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, In God's Image and Likeness, 61 = S. H. Faulring, et al., Original Manuscripts, 593).

Both Abraham Chapter One and Moses Chapter One open with a common theme: the triumph of God over the forces of sky, earth, water, and the powers of men. And the same delegation of that same Divine authority heralds the present dispensation (6 April 1830):

"The church [shall] give heed unto all his words and commandments. . . For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth." As promise for obedience, in a cosmic, even cosmogonic victory (v. 6), "the gates of hell shall not prevail," "the powers of darkness" will be dispersed, and "the heavens" "shake" (Doctrine and Covenants 21:4-6).


V

The reader sees in the investiture of Moses a reference to the Red Sea crossing, and also to Mara made sweet and Meribah (see Hugh Nibley, "To Open the Last Dispensation: Moses Chapter 1," in Nibley on The Timely and The Timeless, 5, 12; ib., Enoch the Prophet, 157-8; 297 n. 300; Hugh Nibley, Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 87-88; Hugh Nibley, "The Circle and the Square, in Temple and Cosmos, 157; ib., Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price, Lecture 18, 4-5; see now also Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, In God's Image and Likeness, 60-1; 96). "The king," says Hugh Nibley of the Year Rite, which reenacts both creation and coronation, "must emerge victorious at the moment of passing through the waters of life, death, rebirth, and purification, and the ancients always understood Moses' leading his people through the Red Sea as the type and similitude of a baptism, symbolizing at one and the same time death, birth, victory, and purification from sins" (Enoch the Prophet, 158).

We can now see why Joseph Smith so oddly adds the label Red Sea to the description of the Galilee in Isaiah 8-9. The powers of darkness afflict the land and the people walk in darkness. They then see a great light of deliverance (a thunderbolt?) and, with joy, herald the birth of the King of Kings. The "way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations" perforce symbolically reflects, another event, that of the Red Sea--and vice-versa (2 Nephi 19:1; JST Isaiah 9:1-2; cf. the Targum Jonathan). Jordan, Galilee, and the Red Sea, like the "wandering names" of Zaphon, are thus brought into one, each brightly reflecting the other (see my "2 Nephi 19:1 and the Red Sea," posted on 2 March 2010).

The subjugation of "the many waters" (ha-mayim rabbim) to the Divine command also clearly references the Divine cosmogony, including things only hinted at in the Bible. Yet Joseph Smith revealed Moses Chapter One decades prior to the decipherment of cuneiform, and a century and more prior to the discovery of the libraries at Ugarit and Ebla. And note how the words in the Book of Moses about the Divine subjugation of the many waters, described as coming from a voice of the Almighty Himself, precedes a detailed account of the Creation. It is the voice of God Himself, through his Prophet, Joseph Smith, not that of 19th century students, which announces to moderns the motif of the cosmogonic battle against the powers of the waters.

In Abraham's story, the Canaanite god, who is the Possessor, Controller, Creator, Producer confronts the God of Abraham, who is also the God of Melchizedek, even the Most High God, the Possessor (El qoneh) of Heaven and Earth (Genesis 12). Pharaoh, and all kings else, cede the day to Melchizedek and to Abraham. No wonder the Slaughter of the Kings in Genesis 12 portrays the in-gathering of rulers from every known clime. Is this combat? or Nowruz? All is one. According to Professor Brown: "Hebrews historicized the [Zaphon combat] myth at several points," viz., creation, flood, Red Sea crossing, return from exile (99). So why not Abraham at Potiphar's Hill at the Plain of Olishem? We do see Abraham at the Slaughter of the Kings at Shaveh and on Mount Moriah, but the terrifying encounter at Olishem finds a trace only in the Nimrod-Abraham legends (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round). Something went missing from the Bible.

Why all these historical moments of cosmic import--even cosmic dispute? The mayim rabbim, surging matter, says Herbert G. May, are "the intransigent elements which had to be quelled by Yahweh before creation could begin, and which must ever be defeated by him as he continues his activity in history" (Herbert G. May, "Some Cosmic Connotations of Mayim Rabbim, 'Many Waters,'" JBL 74 (1955), 11). Accordingly, as the ordering of creation continues, God makes all His servants "stronger than the many waters," as they act in the stead of God, or "even as if thou were God." Abraham at Potiphar's Hill faced Elkenah, in a contest of priestly authority, and in the Name of God, came off conqueror. "I will take thee, to put upon thee my name, even the Priesthood of thy father, and my power shall be over thee" (Abraham 1:18). The reverberation of that moment of victory resounds for the seed of Abraham throughout all subsequent history.

Consider Fishing River and Zion's Camp. Armed men, numbering in the hundreds, planned the "utter destruction" of Joseph Smith and the Camp. A cannonade was begun. But "it seemed as if the mandate of vengeance had gone forth from the God of battles, to protect His servants from the destruction of their enemies." A momentous torrent of rain and hail swamped the mob, as "the water rose thirty feet in thirty minutes in the Little Fishing river." One man was felled by lightning, others drowned, horses fled. The Camp found shelter in an old, hilltop Baptist meeting-house. "As the Prophet Joseph came in shaking the water from his hat and clothing he said, 'Boys, there is some meaning to this, God is in this storm" ("As the Prophet": "Wilford Woodruff's note in Ms. History of the Church, Book A, p.332"; History of the Church II: 102-106).

God is also in this storm surrounding President Thomas S. Monson, our living Prophet.

On the Bashan stele we find traces of Ramesses. He wears the blue crown of coronation and of warrior-conqueror, and this clearly marks him as one who seeks possession of the whole earth. So arrayed, he pauses, like great Alexander, to pacify, or to contest, or to compare titles with, the foreign Elkenah Zapon, though far from Mount Zaphon proper, by offering the image of little Ma'at, gentle daughter of Amun-Re.

All else on the stele is obliterated. Of conquering Ramesses, "nothing beside remains."

The Book of Abraham remains. 

Earth remains--and Olishem and Potiphar's Hill, though unrecognized, still bear their solemn witness.












Notes

Worthy of a brief note is how all four Sons of Horus (or Geb) names in the Book of Abraham reflect business affairs:

Elkenah (possessing, acquiring)

Zibnah (to sell = if zbn; it also evokes Dapuna, Zpn)

Mahmackrah (Semitic: mmkr, to sell)

Koresh (according to the Prophet Muhammad's biography, the clan of Quraysh also conveys the notionality of business acquisition).

What Does The Book of Mormon Name "Cumorah" Signify? Cumorah's Redoubt; Cumorah's Olivepress

I

"I am going to Cumorah" is what the old man, turning down a ride in their wagon, said to Joseph, Oliver, and David.

(https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/MStar/id/27175)

Hugh Nibley points us a road to Cumorah. In a marginal note--just two words--about Mormon's description of Cumorah as "a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains," Nibley writes "spots"; "rock-pits." A few verses down comes another note: "Redoubt; Armaggeddon; Flanders." It is as though Sargeant Nibley were scouting the area for Mormon, prior to the final battle. Something about the pockmarked, spotty nature of the landscape: rock-pits, fountains, and the criss-cross of watercourses, made of Cumorah, for Nibley, the perfect redoubt. (See his annotated Book of Mormon, one of many, BYU Ancient Studies Library, Hugh Nibley, BX 8622.1 A1 1963b, copy dated 7/5/78.)

The name Cumorah also suggests such a landscape. After all, the Akkadian root(s) kumara signifies to heap up, to pile, to tally; then also, to strike down, annihilate. For Latter-day Saint Assyriologist Paul Y. Hoskisson, it is this verbal root that best describes Cumorah (see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary K 111; Hoskisson suggests the reading heaps: "What's in a Name? The Name Cumorah," Journal of the Book of Mormon, 2004, 13:1, 158-160.) [Update 2025: Professor Hoskisson now proposes a different etymology for Cumorah: "“Rise Up, O Light of the Lord”: An Appropriate and Defensible Etymology for Cumorah," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: Vol. 60, 10, 2024.]

Professor Hoskisson also notes in passing (2004) an ancient Syrian place name Kamaru and, following Jean-Marie Durand, suggests it represents an Amorite name deriving from the same root as Akkadian kumara. As Michael C. Astour tells us, Kamaru occurs (up to three times) in ancient Syria--and it persists to this day in the place name Kimar, Syria, just east of the Afrin River (see Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," etc.).

I now turn to James E. Hoch's startling book, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period. Here's what caught this reader's attention in 2011:

A list of place names recorded in the Nubian temple of Amarah West gives us the Syrian Ginta ku-ma-ra, the Winepress of Kumara (or Kumarah). You cannot get any closer to Cumorah than the clear and consistant hierogyphic "group writing," developed by the Egyptian scribes to vocalize Semitic words and names, that expresses West Semitic Ginta Kumara, that is, Gath Kumara (see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 293, #425 = K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 217, no. 98, Dynasty XIX; for II, 217, Scroll down to page 246: https://archive.org/details/KennethA.KitchenRamessideInscriptionsVol2 ).

The first element, Ginta, says Hoch, appears variously in the Amarna Letters (royal Egyptian correspondence that documents many Syro-Palestinian place names) as Gimtu-, Ginti-, or Giti, which corresponds to Hebrew and Ugaritic, gt or gath, a winepress. As for Kumara, the consonant-cum-vowel syllabic "group writing" is very clear: Gardiner's sign list D28, "arms extended," Hoch, 511, /ku/; Aa15 and D38, "unclassified sign" plus "forearm with hand holding a rounded loaf," Hoch, 508, /ma/ (listed as ma4); D21, "mouth," Hoch, 509, /ra/: ku-ma-ra. (Hoch, #425, Ginta Kumara is the first example listed under Ginta; the "sign groups" for Semitic names are listed in Hoch, 506-512). 

Kumarah or Cumorah, as a vineyard, perfectly matches "a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains."

And where was Ginta Kumara?

A second Kumara--if not the very same place--lies in ancient Hurrian country, according to the Great North Syrian List of Thutmose III (and other lists): "k-m-r- (ka-m-r-w)," Michael C. Astour, "Place-Names from the Kingdom of Alalah in the North Syrian List of Thutmose III: A Study in Historical Topography," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1963, 22:4), 230. The place, "still called Kimar," lies "in the Gebel Sim'an, east of the Afrin River," Michael C. Astour, "Semitic Elements in the Kumarbi Myth: An Onomastic Inquiry," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1968 27:3), 173. As Professor Astour reminds us, the name of the Hurrian god Kumarbi means "(He) of Kumar." 

Professor Astour tells us just what the Syrian place name means. The noun kumaru, kuwaru, etc., which signifies generally a construction of earth, specifically refers to a ramp or rampart (buttressing a city or city gate), a redoubt, or a dike. Such an embankment may also have agricultural uses, that is, the protective wall of a garden (think of the Persian paradeisos). Consider the following theophoric name: 'Ammukumarra, "'Ammu is a rampart." A like epithet speaks to "Teshub, the lord of the kamaru of the city of Irrite" (Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26). (Think of Gilgamesh and the wall of the city Uruk.) Note, again, the ending in -a: Ginta Kumara, 'Ammukumarra: that's where the Amorite, or West Semitic element, surfaces. Book of Mormon Cumorah properly shows the West Semitic, rather than the East Semitic, that is, Akkadian, ending.

Beetling embankments, ramparts, and dikes: all these may serve for defensive earthworks, heaped up by men. Of superior worth would be a place where nature herself, in a riot of fountains and pits, rivers and embankments and escarpments, dikes and ditches--all criss-crossed and confounding--and rocks of all sizes everywhere, builds for man a place of redoubt--like Flanders. The whole makes for a natural beehive of military preparation, and, to be sure, the editors of the CAL (Comprehensive Lexicon of Aramaic) see in the Syriac word for beehive (kwr) a trace of the same Akkadian kmr in its sense of walling (brick wall and so on). 

Nature walls off Cumorah and her hill--Mormon has the advantage.

For the ruins of palatial Tell Ain Dara, our Syrian Kumara towering over the paradisaical Afrin Valley, see http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Deinair.html. Tell Ain Dara, Gath Cumorah, Ginta Ku-ma-ra, Rampart and Winepress and Paradise, Semitic names vocalized in Egyptian hieroglyphs, a kind of "reformed Egyptian" for that special purpose--these are the things that catch one's attention.



 
II

In an earlier essay (published in 201o), I link Cumorah with a rare Hebrew, Aramaic, and, perhaps, Ugaritic verb kmr, which variously expresses darkness, gloom, blackness. Professor Hoch thinks kmr to be a by-form of the verb kmh (Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts). 

While the link isn't convincing, it does call to mind the Egyptian name for the fertile Nile Valley, Km.t, the black land. Again consider the Syrian place name, Gath Kumara (the winepress or olivepress of Kumara). The names of West Semitic presses and vineyards often bespeak blessing and fertility. The Bible gives us Gath Rimmon (Persimmon Winepress) and Gethsemane, which last evokes the fatness of the olive and the purity and brakhah--the blessed nature--of its oil. Gath Kumara fairly sings of fertile soil, and much calls to mind a like West Semitic root, krm, vineyard (Vineyard Winepress; Orchard Winepress). As Gath Kerem, so Gath Kumara. Indeed, Gath Kumara yields inherent possibilities for plays on words: the Gath Kumara thus corresponds to the Gath Kerem, the Wine Press of the Hilltop Vineyard, as we might translate the place name. A play on words certainly arises in Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard: the Kerem is planted in a qeren (horn), "a even the Qeren ben Shamen, or "a very fruitful hill" (Isaiah 5:1). But Qeren ben Shamen, though often rendered as "a hillside rich in oil," that is, "fertile," first registers the "horn of rich olive oil," a cornucopia. In Zenos's allegory of the Olive Tree in Book of Mormon Jacob 5:43, we find such a qeren as symbolic of Lehi's land of promise: "I did plant in a good spot of ground; yea, even that which was choice unto me above all other parts of the land of my vineyard." Much of the vineyard consisted of poor and yet poorer soil, about which the keeper of the Vineyard's owner complained incessantly; the children of Lehi were tucked away into a qeren.

Cumorah, the Fruitful Land, the Cornucopia, so much as Protective Rampart of the same, thus bookends nicely with the Book of Mormon Land Bountiful (perhaps reflecting the Semitic root ts-m-r, Tsumar), being respectively the north and south boundaries (rampart as boundary?) of the Land Northward in the Book of Mormon, even Kumar and Tsumar (see F. Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit, 199: ts-m-r, "fruchtbar sein"; the Prophet Joseph Smith is on record as naming fruitful Zion, Zomar). Worthy of note is another Book of Mormon hill, the Jaredite Comron, Place of Comr. . . (Ether 14: 28-29; the Printer's Manuscript names the hill Comron, not, as in our editions, Comnor: Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of The Book of Mormon 6:3874; The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, q.v., "Cumorah," also suggests an etymological link between Cumorah and Comron, though no conclusion is reached. 

If kmr is a by-form of kmh, and if both evoke Km.t, could not Gath Kumara at least connote the black, fertile soil? After all, Kumarbi, he of Kumar, is an earthy, chthonic, fertility deity for the ancient Hurrians (in upper Mesopotamia), and his mythology speaks of a descent into the "dark, dark earth." As for Pomegranate Wine Press, the pomegranate with its abundant seeds becomes, like the fertile black humus, a symbol of fruitfulness par excellence. In the palace garden of Ashurnasirpal III pomegranates and vines richly intertwine (see E. Cook, AJA 108, 56). 

That said, Michael Astour, and others, correctly assign the Syrian place names built on the root kmr to the semantic field of kumaru, to heap up, pile. Kimar, ancient Kumaru, is thus Rampart or Ramp, the place of the Embankment--just east of the Afrin river. Gath Kumara, if the same place, is thus the Winepress of the place Rampart, the (brick) Walled Winepress, or the like. Any other associations with beehives or the black soil (the rich loam piled up about the river banks, etc.), if made at all, would have been secondary, but the association remains natural and inescapable.

Alexander Militarev, an adventurous lexicographer, links Egyptian km, kmm, Km.t with a West Semitic root for darkness, gloom, blackness ('km), but, here, we find ourselves in by-paths: is the "original" root km? or 'km? or kmr? Or is kmr also a by-form of 'km, and therefore to be linked etymologically with Egyptian km and Km.t? Here is a language confounded and contorted into by-forms and shades of meaning. As early as the 19th century, scholars linked, though weakly, km with some of these same Semitic forms. Hoch has it right: the root has taken on affixes (an -r extension), owing perhaps to dialect or confusion with another verb. Kmr, km, 'km: these likely do not all derive from the same root, but no matter--babel language has thrown them together. The semantic field--and the symbolic--has overlapped since the earliest times.

We cannot know just what came to the ordinary Nephite's mind, when he heard the name Cumorah, but some mind linked name and nature's fortress. We have only a fragment of the Hebrew spoken by the ancients: Biblical Hebrew, much of it poetic, classical, does not yield enough material to provide answers to questions about Semitic roots like kmr.

Yet Mormon tells us what the place Cumorah was like, and does so in terms suggestive of the West Semitic name Kumaru. Yet we may imaginatively perceive a link between the kum of Cumorah and that of Km.t (Kumat or Kamat). (The Greek word for mound is likewise kom.) Ramps and mounds are heaped-up of piles of black earth. And the Nile Valley, after each inundation, runs all a-dot with little black mounds, each awaiting the touch of life. Black earth spells germination, a semiotically rich theme belonging to the common Afro-Semitic "encyclopaedia." Kmr signifies black heaps of fertile soil, so well as ramparts, dikes, and ruined mounds. 

While Professor Astour explains the place name Kumaru in light of Akkadian kumaru (to throw down and thus heap up, etc.), the Sumerian lexeme answering to kumaru yields GUR-GUR, which refers to the tallying up of a sum: you heap up, and then you total the gain. So why not associate Hurrian Kumaru with the high-yield Kumat, or Black Land? "Every spring," explains Professor Ronald J. Leprohon, "the Nile flood would subside and what first emerged from the water were triangular-shaped islands of rich black earth. These little mounds represented the promise of new life, which led to the notion that all creation must have begun exactly the same way" ("Egyptian Religious Texts," Egyptology Today (ed) R. H. Wilkinson, 231). Such ideas need not be exclusively Egyptian, and Kumarbi's center place may thus be another Black Land, another place of beginning where life stirs into being. Similar little mounds do indeed appear in the Mesopotamian record, but here the theme is not "the promise of new life," but annihilation: "as if the flood had devastated them, I [Sargon] piled up (his cities) into ruin mounds [u-kam-mi]" (CAD K 114).

Mormon's Cumorah speaks to ruin, even annihilation.

The Sumerian lexicon also yields KUM (to be, become hot, heat), a word likely to be a Semitic loan-word; it's a shared word anyhow. How to bridge the gap between Egyptian Kuma and Sumerian KUM, between black and hot? Lamentations 5:10 speaks of faces "hot like an oven" (nikmaru), and some have translated the word as scorched, blackened. Hot as an oven; black as an oven, it is all the same. Blackness absorbs heat. Afroasiatic Km, together with its by-forms kmr and 'km, signifies heat. Heat, gloom, sadness, darkness, blackness all come together in an original root, kum. For Job, a very trying day, a day in which everything piles on, is a kamirirey yom--not just kmr but kmr-r. 

Any relation to Akkadian kumaru? Who can say? 

Again, I can't make a lexical connection, but it's easy to see how semantic and symbolic fields might overlap. In West Semitic one of the meanings of kmr and 'km has to do with the heat necessary for the germination of plant life in the dark earth. Which brings us back to the greatest Hurrian god, Kumarbi, he of Kmr, the chthonic rampart god. A blade of wheat is his symbol. Does Syrian Kumaru, then, signify rampart? or black earth? or both?

Cumorah, with its many waters, rivers, and fountains, calls up Spring's fertility, a black land like the Egyptian Kumat, as km.t was likely pronounced. (For the vocalization of Egyptian km.t, see Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, 42, 88. Egyptians referred to themselves as the Ramats ni Kumat (the people of Kumat), or even as the Kumut). Where such a link between ku-ma-ra and the black earth may not be linguistically sound, we may yet term it semiotically suggestive, part of a shared connotative encyclopaedia, somewhere on the other side of denotation and dictionary. Matching dictionary and the denotative would be Cumorah the Redoubt, the Rampart Land, "serving," as Shakespeare would have it, "in the office of a wall." In other words, Cumorah denotes a Rampart, a stronghold, "this fortress built by Nature for herself"; it may also connote a land rich in promise.

III

Is a New York Cumorah a rampart too far?

The search for Cumorah will be facilitated so well by the meaning of the name as by Mormon's description of the land and the hill that bear the name. And until those who seek Cumorah identify a place that better matches the linguistic and narrative evidence, a study of New York antiquities can still serve up surprises. 

E. G. Squire's study of the native antiquities of New York, whether Huron or a bit older, comes chock full of details about how First Nations threw up earthworks and dug ditches in tandem with the natural defenses found in springs, spits, pits, bays, fissures in the limestone, etc. Squire's descriptions astonish. The natural defenses are already sufficiently strong to require but little in the way of the works of men: some ditches for palisades, earthen gates and ramparts--these last, large but not spectacular--and so forth. 

Even for the reader who situates Cumorah in Mexico (and as Hugh Nibley reminds us, Anahuac, that is the Valley of Mexico, does signify waters), Squire's study will prove indispensable in setting forth the proper Cumorah terrain (Ephraim G. Squire, Antiquities of New York, 1853). Western New York, anyway you slice it, has always been good Cumorah land. Nibley argued that a New York setting for Cumorah was not a bridge too far; he also saw the merit in a Mesoamerican or Peruvian setting, provided Cumorah's hill remained a hill, and not some ridiculous mountain, upon which no armies could be arranged in battle formation. That's how Hugh Nibley saw it. Now we also see Cumorah in Syria. 

And Syria today sadly sees Cumorah.

Notes

Curiosity about Zarahemla, the land of Nephi, or the narrow neck of land comes with the reading. Hugh Nibley once answered a direct question about the location of the city of Zarahemla with some specific indications. I don't know what startled me more: that I would ask so directly or that such specificity would be immediately forthcoming. 

On the other hand, I also heard Brother Nibley say on more than one occasion, "I wouldn't touch Book of Mormon geography with a forty-foot pole." Did he place any value on John Sorenson's Mesoamerican research, a Mesoamerican approach to the Book of Mormon? Yes. Brother Nibley praised and recommended his work to students. Where a question remains open, we might profit from any thoughtful study.

I greatly prize my own copy of John Sorenson's last book, Mormon's Codex. There is so much in the book that calls to mind the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, everywhere we turn the Book of Mormon swims into ken, from news reports to ancient place names in Syria. Even thumbing through a Greek lexicon presents surprising correspondences to Book of Mormon thought. Scripture is resonant.

So what about the "forty-foot pole"?

An overmuch concern with Book of Mormon geography in the Americas, beyond noting the internal consistency of geographic reference within the book, lies outside intelligent endeavor. Determined argument on such matters becomes the mark of the huckster or the fanatic and hardly speaks to spiritual or social refinement.



Notes


"I am going to Cumorah": Joseph F. Smith, Orson Pratt, Interview with David Whitmer, 1878 Millennial Star

Paul Y. Hoskisson, "What's in a Name: Cumorah," The Journal of the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project (BYU, Neal A. Maxwell Institute), q.v. "Cumorah"

Michael Astour, Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Bountiful Zion, Zomar, Zamar, Shamry, Shamrana--and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers

When Hugh Nibley says the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet (1835-36), with its "many happy guesses," "is not all pure nonsense," he means what he says: it is mostly pure nonsense ("The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers," Maxwell Institute, Provo, Utah).

And what is the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet? It consists of a collaborative endeavor by Joseph Smith and his associates to grasp the principles of governance upon which the Ancient Egyptians organized their society and to take a wild stab at a locked language. It's a bit of boldness; yet no sooner begun, the project was closed, the notebook buried away. We see morning dew distilling, but no sustained downpour of knowledge from heaven. Thereafter, the brethren were put to school by Brother Joseph, studying Hebrew under the tutelage of a well-known teacher. As Hugh Nibley notes, serious mental labor at a known language would become the new prerequisite for further attempts to trace the ciphered past.

Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language makes for a promising title; it promises a complete and ordered view of the Egyptian mind: a library, a universe. After a day or two, the library shut its doors. By way of contrast with the ephemeral encyclopaedia, the Book of Abraham, published seven years later, glistens a radiant gem of expression and clarity. The Alphabet remains dark as clay; Abraham speaks with a poetic energy (see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith, 290ff.).

Yet the Egyptian Grammar may have some light to shed on the ancient encyclopaedia. Consider the following statement, under the heading Beth, on page 23 of that document:

Beth  The place appointed of God for the residence of Adam; Adam ondi=Ahman. A fruit garden made to be fruitful, by blessing or promise; great valley or plain, given by promise, fitted with fruit trees and precious flowers, made for the healing of man. Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye; sweet and delightful to the smell; place of happiness, purity, holiness, and rest; even Zomar--Zion. [Note that the r in Zomar overwrites another letter; further traces show a dash written over an illegible word or words, followed by Zion.]

The words allude to the Revelation of Saint John and Doctrine and Covenants Section 58. Section 58 has as setting an observed Sabbath in the delightsome land of Zion. To the little band of saints, sabbath gathering, Jackson County, Missouri (once Eden) was now home. And, finally, the passage from the Alphabet and Grammar also has echoes of the Book of Abraham: "another place of residence," "happiness," "rest": home.

Adam-ondi-Ahman (Nibley reads "Adam in the Presence of God"), found in early Latter-day Saint writings and attributed to the Prophet Joseph, names the residence of Adam after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Spring Hill, overlooking the Grand River near Westport, Missouri, was, after the Fall, the home of Adam (Doctrine and Covenants 116:1). As for Zion, the Prophet Joseph had already published a revelation about the home of Enoch: "And it came to pass in his days, that he built a city that was called the City of Holiness, even ZION" (Moses 7:19). And Zomar? Nothing on heaven or on earth seems to help us with Zomar.

Did the description of the great valley orchard of Zomar also come from the prophetic mind? Or did it come from the minds of his associates, perhaps in consultation with the Prophet? I picture these brethren sitting, speaking, pondering together; then each making his own attempt to pull the threads together. What results is disparity, separation, difference. Ultimately it is the Prophet Joseph alone who enters history as the translator of ancient records. There is no peer.

If it is Joseph Smith who gives us Adam-ondi-Ahman and Enoch's Zion, then Zomar plausibly also comes from him. Zomar as Zion thus also appears in the anti-Mormon letters of apostate Ezra Booth. Again, in an imaginative piece by Elder Parley P. Pratt, the expression zo-ma-rah fancifully names the "Pure News" of a longed-for future day--a Deseret News or Zion Times, if you will ("One Hundred Years Hence: 1945," 141, Millennial Star 6:9, 15 Oct. 1845; for these references see Samuel M. Brown, "Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden," Church History 78:1, 2009, 26-65, esp. footnote 114). According to Samuel Brown, "imaginative associations" like those about gardens and Zomar abound in "American hieroglyphic culture" and "both illuminate and extend familiar concepts from antebellum culture"--which explains everything! Yet Zomar, however odd in heaven or earth, "is not all pure nonsense." In fact, it is not nonsense at all--and we shall return to the theme of Joseph in Egypt momentarily.

We need a homing device to find rest in Zomar--and such a means is indeed forthcoming in languages with which Joseph Smith had no familiarity whatsoever.

Consider the following entry in Professor F. Grondahl's study of Canaanite names from Ugarit, alongside further instances from Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Lamia R. Shehadah, and Wolf Leslau:

tsmr [ts-m-r]  "fructbar sein" [to be fruitful] (Amorite, Syriac, Arabic)
(Semitic tzadei [tz or ts] often appears in transliteration as a z: Zomar ~ Tzomar.)
Frauke Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Rome, 1967), 199

shmr *tsmr, "bear fruit" (Arabic, Old South Arabic)
Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 267

Proto Semitic s[#1]mr, "bear fruit," "fruit," Arabic tsamr "fruit," Ugaritic tsmr "be fruitful"
Lamia R. Shehadeh, "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," in Working with No Data: Semitic and Egyptian Studies (D. M. Golomb, Susan T. Hollis, eds, 1987), 236

Ethiopic samra, flourish, be fruitful, abound in fruit, grow abundantly; Arabic thamara, bear fruit,
South Arabic, tmr, produce crops
Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic), 503.

How about Akkadian (East Semitic)? Zamar (fruit), we are told, is the Neo-Assyrian form of Akkadian azamru.
Chaim Cohen, Joseph Maran, Melissa Vetters, "An Ivory Rod with a Cuneiform Inscription," Archaeologischer Anzeiger 2010/2, 1-22 (see note 47)

We may further descry the root ts-m-r in the Egyptian lexicon (cf. Woerterbuch V 300.10, 307.1, 308.2-3). (Ancient Egyptian shares some morphology and many cognates with other Afroasiatic languages.) The word tm or tm3 describes a sacred tree, while tm3.t becomes an Egyptian synonym for mother (probably, the fruitful one), especially divine mothers like Hathor, the goddess often depicted as a cow. (The final literal in tm3, an aleph, was originally pronounced /R/ and thus corresponds to Semitic /r/.)

What the word means becomes clear from a text describing the taboo violations of the rebel Seth (Book of the Overthrow of Seth and his Gang, pLouvre 3129 C35-6, in Urk IV, ed. Siegfried Schott = Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, New York, 1996, 392):

He has let the milk of Sekhat-Hor dry away,
he has thrown down the htmt cow, the mother of god.
He has cut off supply on the lake of the Tm trees,
he let the lake of the htmt cow dry up.

The name of the cow, the htm.t, or provider, unlocks the meaning: milk, mother, supply, lake, these all bespeak Egypt's bounty (Woerterbuch III, c.v. htm.t; the word plays on Tm). Supply (or nourishment) answers to the Egyptian shb.w; for instance, a shb.t is a great melon rife with seeds. The lakes of the Tm trees and of the htm.t cow represent the source of all nourishment for Egypt, nourishment that begins with the food and drink offerings to the gods and the souls of the dead (Woerterbuch IV, 438: shb.t).

Another sacred tree, the Nebes, buds in continuance of abundance everywhere (Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 391):

He has neared Saft el-Henna, he has entered the walled quarter,
he has done sacrilege to the holy Nebes tree
--when it greens, the earth greens--
He has neared that sacred chamber of Iusas
with the acacia, which contains death and life.

All these trees and lakes make up Egypt's sacred gardens, small moments of paradise enclosed like memories behind the walls of temple estates. The Egyptian word for estate, pr, answers to Hebrew bayit and so recalls the heading Beth in the description of the fruitful paradise in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. Beth as house signifies nothing; beth, or bayit, as enclosed orchard, what the Persians called a pairidaeza, speaks volumes. These Egyptian gardens, with their waters and trees of life, constitute the ceremonial centers "that keep the universe in motion": "when it greens, the earth greens." The sway of the Nebes Tree is therefore absolute: "as it greens, so greens the earth to the extent thereof" (Hr 3wj=f, Urk. Vi, 21 n. b; Roland Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon [1950], 195; Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 392; cf. Alma 32. An interpretation of these temple and tomb gardens may be found in Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, New York, 2005), tr. by David Lorton of Tod und Jenseits im Alten Aegypten, Chapter 9.2b, "Visiting the Garden," 221ff.).

As Grondahl notes, some of that greening to the extent thereof also appears along the Levantine coastline. From the list of Semitic names coming under the heading of ts-m-r, we learn that Tsmry is also a Ugaritic place name (UT 19.2701). In West Semitic the name would have been pronounced something like Tsamra. How do we know? Because the cuneiform writing of the associated name, Tsmrn, yields sha-am-ra-na. Why sha-? In Akkadian the tzadei (-tz/ts) is often realized as a shin (-sh). (Tsamra pleasantly evokes the modern name for Ugarit: Ras Shamra, Fennel Hill.) 

Tsamra signifies the Fruitful Land, a land called Bountiful "because of its much fruit and also wild honey" (see 1 Nephi 17, verses 5 and 6), or "A garden made to be fruitful. . . fitted with fruit trees. . . good to the taste. . . place of happiness. . . and rest; even Zomar." And even Cumorah: Tsamar or Zomar makes a linguistic and conceptual match with Kumara or Kumar, perhaps the Black Land, as in the rich Cornucopia of Egypt (Kumat). In Syria we find the Gath Kumara, the fruitful Wine Press of Cumorah. Kumara denotes an earthern ramp or rampart; it may also suggest a casting up of deep, rich soil for the cultivation of vines and fruit-bearing trees. In The Book of Mormon, the lands called Bountiful and Cumorah respectively make up the fruitful southern and northern bookends of the Land Northward.

We turn from place names to people. The name *Amm (i)-yitstamar (a Gt imperfect verbal stem: 'mtstmr = Ammu will be fruitful) is not only attested at Mari but also "borne by two kings of Ugarit," Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 81-2. Ugarit also attests the personal name, 'iltstmr (My god will be fruitful), ibid., 81 n.135. Cyrus Gordon translates 'Ammistamar as "'Amm has been fruitful in bestowing the son who bears this personal name,'" R. Hetzron, ed., The Semitic Languages, C. Gordon, "Amorite and Eblaite," 104. Need we be shocked by the same god bearing the Cumorah name: 'Ammukumarra, "Ammu is a rampart," Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26?

Lamia R. Shehadeh adds more names from Ugarit: Ben-Tsomar, bn-tsmr (son of fruitfulness), and blessed Shamrana (little fruitful one), "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," 236. The people of Mari and Ugarit were of the children of Canaan, among whom, though not noted by Professor Huffmon, are to be found the Zemarites (Genesis 10:18; 1 Chronicles 1:16). The ruins of the Zemarite city Simyra, "at the western base of Lebanon," is known to this day under name of Sumra. (Gesenius, Hebrew Lexicon). The Egyptians spelled the name Dmrm (Helck, Beziehungen, 241 = Baumgarter, Stamm III). Sumra (also a personal name in Arabic) connotes a Bountiful ruined, a lost Zion, even "ZION IS FLED" (see Moses 7:69; chapter 7 also recounts the transformation of the vale of Shum into a wasteland: Shum something recalls Sumra).

Does the root ts-m-r appear in Biblical Hebrew? Not according to Grondahl--but how about these Zemarites "of the families of Canaan"? A like root, D-m-r/z-m-r, does appear in Hebrew and other Semitic languages and, according to the lexicon, signifies protection or strength, though its use in the Bible is limited to personal names and to the poetic line about God being "my strength and (my) song" (Exodus 15:2, Song of the Sea; Isaiah, Psalms), and to some words from Jacob to his sons about taking a gift to the Egyptian vizier "from the strength of the earth" (miz-zimrat ha-aretz, Genesis 43:11). It is a gift for Joseph--a most appropriate gift, as we shall see.

Before going forward, a philological, if not musical, note is in order. First, the expression "my strength and (my) song" is now understood as "my strength and my protection" (with 'zz and zmr as indissoluble yoke pair, see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #582; Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, "The Song of Miriam," JNES 14 (1955), 243). Because I also see a cognate in Egyptian Tm3-' (strong of arm), I take the primary meaning of the root z-m-r to be strength, with protection as a derivative (cf. Koehler, Baumgarter Lexicon of Hebrew I). Another Egyptian expression, Tm3-r3 (strong of mouth), calls up the idea of singer or musician, and, here, I see a play on words with a homonymous Semitic root. An unrelated root, zmr, does mean song, and that's what led to the translators' confusion (and the Egyptian word play). And I can easily imagine the earliest translators from Hebrew into Greek confusing zmr and zmr: It's the sort of mischief that happens all the time and which also, as it happens, generates moments of poetry unknown to the ancient writer--"my strength and my song." I'm sorry to see the expression go, no matter how powerful the combination of Uz and Zimri, those mythical bookends of the created world (see Ezekiel).

But what has that happy confusion to do with Zomar? Lexicographers render Jacob's "strength of the earth" as "best produce of the land" (Koehler, Baumgartner, Lexicon of Hebrew and Aramaic). Might the nominal reading of the archaic root z-m-r as strength in Genesis 43:11 represent yet another error in translation? or, perchance, a play on words? (The ancient translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek do render: apo ton karpon tes ges, "from the fruit of the ground.") Either way the translation stands: the strength of the earth produces the best fruits of the land.

Consider the entire verse from Genesis:

And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds.

Even in times of famine, Israel dwells in a land of blessing and promise, strength and song:

A little balm, and a little honey,
spices, and myrrh,
nuts, and almonds.

The richly wrapped present ironically conveys a token of recognition and memory from a distant homeland and can be likened to the sweet smell lingering on the remnant of Joseph's coat. It is the lingering scent of Zion. (The book to read on the symbolism linking al-Thalabi, Lives of the Prophets, and Alma 46:24 is Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon; cf. also Professor Erik Hornung's comments on the perfumed radiance that suffuses the divine in his Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many).

And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed (Genesis 27:27).

The children of Joseph found their own Tsmry in their various lands of promise:

And Abijah stood up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim, and said, Hear me, thou Jeroboam, and all Israel (2 Chronicles 13:4; cf. Joshua 18:22, in Benjamin).

And [after the horrors of the Rub' al-Khali] we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey (1 Nephi 17:5 and also verse 6, in which the expression "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" is meaningfully repeated).

Both Ephraim and Zemaraim in 2 Chronicles 13:4 connote a place doubly fruitful (the -aim-ending is often taken as the morpheme of duality). In Genesis 41:52 we read: "And the name of the second called he Ephraim: for God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." Thus for King Abijah (My Father is Jehovah) to stand "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim," and to preach the Davidic covenant of peace, is to redouble fruitfulness.

But I venture into midrash. . . After all, the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (like Gesenius) defines Zemaraim as "double fleece of wool," by association with a synonymous root, ts-m-r, "to be shaggy," or woolly (perhaps "to be luxiurant, abounding in fleece?"; for this woolly root, see also A. Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, 362: CMR "wool"; note also CMR II, Aramaic "to heat up"; Akkadian cemer, "be swollen," a root which easily falls under the semantic sphere of CMR = ts-m-r, "to be fruitful" or "to produce fruit"). Still, doesn't the doubly fruitful make more sense than the doubly woolly?

The gift of Joseph overflows in the promise of Ephraim, Joseph's fruitful son:

"And take double money in your hand. . . and arise, go again unto the man" (Genesis 43:12-13).

Another reading logically considers the Arabic word ts-m-r or ts-b-r (tsumr), which signifies "the upper part or the high point of an object" ("der obere Teil oder die Spitze einer Sache," W. Baumgartner, J.J. Stamm, Hebraische und Aramaisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament, III (Leiden, 1983), 970); although these same Hebrew lexicographers rather modify the definition of the word found in Lane's Arabic lexicon, which last reads: "The side of a thing: or a side rising above the rest of a thing: or its upper part, or top: or its edge. . . the m is said to be substituted for n" (Lane 1727). Baumgarter and Stamm accordingly render Zemaraim as "double peak" and tsemeret ha-'aroz, in Ezekiel 17:3, 22 (see also 31:3, 10), as "the highest branch of the cedar."

I'm not convinced. Lane's lexicon begins its treatment of the root ts-m-r by saying it expresses something niggardly, tenacious, reserved. This is so because ts-m-r denotes something that has collected into a low place, specifically the resting-place of waters in a valley--a collecting pool, no less. From there, we get the connotations of foul or sour smells (from the stagnant pool) and of tenaciousness or stinginess, as well as the idea of a day of still wind or the time or action of sunset. All this sour downward gravity has little in common with twin peaks. The collecting pools of stinginess hardly reflect Zion. It's clear that tsumr (or tsubr), which refers to things like the edges or uppermost parts of a cup, does not provide the best reading for Zemaraim. The Arabic root thamara (noun thamar: fruit, fruits; result, fruitage, yield, profit, benefit, gain) better answers to our Zemaraim (Wehr, Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary).

Given the fruitful significance of the Semitic root ts-m-r, and its semantic correspondence to the name Ephraim (as understood by the Hebrews), the ancient scribe was certainly aware of the connotations of standing "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim." As for the "highest branch of the cedar," is it not the highest branch, after all, that is the most productive, the most bountiful? Ezekiel's eagle, in its work of plucking and transplanting branches, brings about the fruit of Zion: "In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit" (17:23). Then all shall know that the God of Enoch, the Rock of Zion, has "made the dry tree to flourish" (17:24).

Ezra Booth, in his keenly biting, detail-laden anti-Mormon letters to the Ohio Star, gives us the idea. For the consecration of the temple site of the New Jerusalem in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, the brethren transplanted a tree (a very silly thing for them to do, says Booth) and laid a cornerstone ("Mormonism, No. VI," Ohio Star, Ravenna, Ohio, 17 Nov. 1831, in Matthew R. Roper (ed), 19th-Century Publications about the Book of Mormon, BYU, 2010):

"A shrub oak, about ten inches in diameter at the butt, the best that could be obtained near at hand, was prostrated, trimmed, and cut-off at a suitable length; and twelve men answering to the twelve Apostles, by the means of handspikes conveyed it to the place. . . The stone being placed, one end of the shrub oak stick was laid upon it; and thus was laid down the first stone and stick, which are to form an essential part of the splendid City of Zion."

As for the curious: "They will be able to ascertain the spot, by the means of a sappling [sic], distinguished from others by the bark being taken off on the north and on the east side. On the south side of the sappling will be found the letter, T, which stands for Temple; and on the east side ZOM for Zomar; which Smith says is the original word for Zion. Near the foot of the sappling, they will find a small stone, covered over with bushes, which were cut for that purpose. This is the corner-stone for the Temple."

All this fuss seemed absurd to Booth, who, blind to the purposes of the symbolic, lamented the money lost by the Brethren to travel expenses: "more than one thousand dollars in cash."

But in a coming day "the dry tree" will flourish.

Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye, sweet and delightful to the smell.

Made for the healing of man.

From the bounty of the earth.

Home.


Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm

The Plain of Olishem and the Field of Abram: Book of Abraham, Chapter One

I  Olishem on GoogleEarth

Even the thank-offering of a child did the priest of Pharaoh offer upon the altar which stood by the hill called Potiphar's Hill, at the head of the plain of Olishem (Abraham 1:10).
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr?lang=eng

Abraham's book opens in a running poetic style, as if the author had both a grace for words and not a moment to lose; the second part of verse 10 even shows meter:

which stood by the hill/
called Potiphar's Hill,/
at the head of the plain of Olishem.

Given Abraham's vivid account, the reader can clearly see the hill rising at the head of the stretching plain. "The places and names are specific and real," says Hugh Nibley. Despite the poetic touch, this is a real place, a place that could swim into ken on GoogleEarth. Look for it!

I'd start with the fortified natural hill, Tell Bazi, in the middle Euphrates, as described by Professor A. Otto. (Hint: look at the startling photographs.)

(Hugh Nibley and Michael D. Rhodes, One Eternal Round [2010], 187; Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 406; Adelheid Otto, "Archeological Perspectives on the Localization of Naram-Sin's Armanum," Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 58, 2006).


II  Is Ulisum Olishem?

So where is the plain of Olishem? John Lundquist links Olishem with a Syrian place name found in the Akkadian record (in a scribal copy from Ur), Ulisum: "Naram-Sin the strong defeated Arman and Ebla and from the banks of the Euphrates as far as Ulisum." Arman? Ebla? Ulisum? Ebla has been found, excavated, her record, rich with the flavor of Genesis, read. Where is Ulisum? Far away in the West, says the record. Somebody ought to look for that one, too. And whether Naram-Sin's Ulisum occupies the same spot as Abraham's Olishem, it's the very same name. Transcriptions of Mesopotamian names first break the readings into syllables that reflect the primary syllabic character of cuneiform writing. The reading Ulisum (from the form u[2]-li-si-im-ki, Ulisim) ought to be ultimately transcribed, as John Gee carefully sets forth, Ulisem or even Olisem (u[2]-li-se[2]-em-ki. (The Sumerian determinative sign KI found at the end of the place name is a logogram that signifies land.) As Michael Rhodes and Hugh Nibley further explain: "The 'u' and 'o' are phonetic variants of each other in Semitic languages. Moreover texts from the time of Naram-Sim regularly use the 's' to represent the 'sh' sound" (One Eternal Round, 173; text cited on ps. 172-3; John Gee, "A Tragedy of Errors," note 64).

"From the banks of the Euphrates as far as Olishem": Is that far-away Ulisum or Olis(h)em the same as Abraham's plain of Olishem? or is it Michael Astour's Ulizina, perhaps to be found "on the Gulf of Iskendurun, below the western slope of the Amanus" (M. Astour, Eblaica, 67)? Conclusions remain premature, but it would be remiss not to point out the similarity between these names and, by so doing, show that the Book of Abraham merits a second look.


What does Olishem mean? John Gee and Stephen Ricks suggest Semitic Ali-Shem, City of Shem--but Abraham says nothing of a city ("Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study," in Paul Hoskisson, ed., Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures [Provo, 2001], note 113). Oli- mirrors other names found in the Book of Abraham: Oliblish (a governing star), Olimlah (the servant of a Prince of Egypt), and Egyptian or West Semitic Olea (the moon). These last are Egyptian names: Olimlah matches the Egyptian name Wrj-jmn-r' (Great is Amun-Ra, Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 220-1). Other phonological matches may include Wrj-mj-r' (Great like Re) and '3j-jmn-r' (Great is Amun-Re). Oliblish, in light of the iconography on Facsimile 2--and, given the lack of hieroglyphs, we have to listen for these names--suggests Wrj-b3-Shw, Great is the Ba of Shu.

Now to Olishem, which appears to be a Canaanite, rather than Egyptian, name. Should we even attempt an Egyptian reading, I would prefer for Oli- neither '3j nor wrj because a choice just as phonologically sound, and even more specific and peculiar to what Abraham 1 describes, presents itself: 3w or 3wj, with 3 as O- and wj as lateral glide, thus l- or li-. Because the dictionary designates 3w as an expanse of land (Woerterbuch I, 4), 3wj-shem suggests "the broad expanse of Shem," or the Plain of Shem." There is a Hebrew cognate, for Egyptian 3wj matches Hebrew rb (to be large: Egyptian 3 = Hebrew r; w ~ b) and further suggests r-h-b, a broad, open area, a plaza: Rekhob-Shem. (Does rhb derive from rb-rb?) Nibley will give me a bit of help: On page 414 of An Approach to the Book of Abraham, we read that "Phathus or Petor" [Potiphar?] "was originally the name of Aram-naharaim, Abraham's native city, when it was first settled by Aram and his brother Rekhob." Indeed (414 n. 138): "The name of Rekhob alone would guarantee its religious background"--which brings us back to 3w, rb, and rhb (I'm adding all these italics, to be sure.)


III  Olishems Everywhere!

For Professors Gee and Ricks another West Semitic place name (or names), mentioned in Middle Kingdom execration texts, recalls Olishem: Irissym(n) and 3wshamm, a designation sometimes supposed to refer to 'Urushalimum, that is, Jerusalem ("Historical Plausibility," notes 116 and 117 = James Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 493). Nothing could suggest Olishem more forcibly than 3wshamm! James Hoch reads the hieroglyphs on the execration texts as 'lw-w-shl-l-m-m = *'Urushalimum, while noting: "If the reconstruction is correct, the writing is defective, indicating neither the i- nor all of the u- vowels." Absent these vowels, Hoch's reading could yet yield Orushalemem, that is, "the land of Jerusalem." I read the same signs as 3wj-sh3-m-m, a name marked with the determinative sign of land or place (not city): the land of Owishamem or Olishamum. Sham (ash-Sham), the reader will recall, is the Arabic name for Syria. How old is the name? How old is Damascus?

Because the Egyptian "group writing" for the West Semitic place name Oli-shamum does use the very same hieroglyph that signifies expanse of land, plain, as discussed above, a proposed reading of 3wj as Oli matches Abraham's description of the place as "the plain of Olishem." And here we must also recall p3 hql 'brm, the heqel Abram (the p3 is the Egyptian definite article), or Field of Abram, a Syro-Palestinian place name mentioned "in the great Karnak inscription of Sheshonq I," a place which, says Hugh Nibley, again recalls our plain of Olishem, an open field set apart as the gathering-place for the nation (see One Eternal Round, 171-3; 182-7; James Henry Breasted, "The Earliest Occurrence of the Name Abram," The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 21:1, Oct. 1904, 22-36 ). Here is the maidan or rekhob, the plain or field, as the panegyric gathering-place of all the sons of Shem.

Confusion between place names, and their reinterpretation over time, marks nothing new in the Ancient Near East, for "Wandering of geographic names is a common phenomenon." The name of Mount Moriah, where Abraham offered Isaac, transfers onto Mount Zion, which itself comes to bear the name Zaphon, that Olympus of "the heights of the north" (Psalm 48:3; Johannes C. de Moor, "Ugarit and Israelite Origins," Congress Volume Paris, ed., J.A. Everton, 217-18). We are dealing with both a severely limited geographic area and also with a specific and peculiar Kulturkreis; within such close compass, we can expect a second or even a third Ulisum, Olishem, or Olishamum.


IV  Heaven's Height: Olishem's Sun Hill

Hugh Nibley advances a convincing etymology for Olishem in An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 415: "Olishem [and also Ulishim, for that matter] can be readily recognized by any first-year Hebrew student [ouch!] as meaning something like 'hill of heaven,' 'high place of heaven,' or even possibly 'sun hill' [or] the Plain of the High Place of Heaven," etc. ('al= '-l-y, "height"; Shami, Shamah, "visible heavens, sky" = Sky-Height; Heaven's Height). For Abraham on the altar, the place becomes Anti-Zion; then Bright Angel appears. (Tsiyy-on suggests a high place of blinding white-hot brilliance.) As for Potiphar's Hill, its Egyptian name signifies "the Hill of the One-whom-Re-has given or appointed" (One Eternal Round, 172; Approach to the Book of Abraham, 415).

Who is the one whom Re has given? In Genesis, the name belongs to a "captain of the guard" and also to the "high priest" of Heliopolis, Sun City. That both are stand-ins for the King, the Captain of all and ultimate Priest of the Sun, cannot be doubted. Potiphar's Hill, an open shrine to Re, thus belongs by definition to Pharaoh himself and to Pharaoh alone (see Jan Assmann, ed., The King as Sun Priest). In Book of Abraham Chapter 1, it is Pharaoh's priestly substitute, as every priest perforce must be, that presides at Potiphar's Hill--and the pretender must die. Abraham, as Nibley often asserts, is the pretender who must die, but in a dramatic reversal God "smote the priest." His stunning death, at the very moment he lifts the knife to slay the pretender, says Abraham, caused "great mourning. . . in the court of Pharaoh" (1:20). Forget Ulisum, that last phrase alone speaks with such convincing power that no serious reader will set the book down after meeting that sentence. Any ancient reader would have paused in wonder at the irony of reversal, in the statement about the death of the priest causing "great mourning" hundreds of miles away at the "court." The Book of Abraham has great literary resonance.

The ceaseless carping at the Book of Abraham today, the scorn and jocularity, the intellectual preening and pose of superiority, makes me rejoice no end. What it reveals from the housetops of cyberspace is that it is only the thoughtful reader, the kind of reader that pauses over words and phrases, that looks things up in other books, that studies and prays, who will begin to discover the pearl of greatest price. And that's how it should be!

Now consider: if Joseph can, by marriage to his daughter, inherit Potiphar, and thus become a Potiphar, that is, a stand-in for Pharaoh himself, cannot Abraham also play the part? Why else would Pharaoh seek to take Abraham's wife for himself? Joseph, in his own varied circumstances, passes through the same tests Abraham once faced and receives the like blessings. The inheritance, the throne on high, is the gift of Re. Potiphar signals both the altar and the ultimate exaltation. Both the Joseph and the Abraham narratives culminate in exaltation to a kingly station; no wonder Abraham goes to the trouble of giving a history of the Egyptian kingship, while also explaining his own patriarchal claims and bloodline. Whatever the origins of the name Potiphar, its ritual implications in the patriarchal narratives are clear.


V  A lot of explaining to do

Because Brother Joseph's Explanation of Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 helpfully gives us Shaumau (to be high) for what may be the same root as the -shem in Olishem, we might then also read Olishem as Oli-Shaum, Oli-Shaumau, or even Oli-Shaumaum. So what do we have? Are we to understand Olishem as the plain of the expanse of Shem? the plain of the expanse of heaven? the high place of Shem? Jerusalem? place of ascent of heaven? the heights of heaven? or the high place of heaven? All seem to fit, but which makes for the best cultural, ritual, and linguistic match? which, the specific and peculiar?

Hugh Nibley reaches the root of the matter: It is one thing for Joseph Smith to give us a name susceptible to linguistic analysis, it is entirely another for that same name to yield a meaning which fits the ritual Sitz im Leben of the Ancient Near East. The notion of plain-cum-hill, Plain of the High Place of Heaven, fits the ancient setting, as do also the Heliopolitan associations of Potiphar's Hill, for Potiphar, in the Joseph story, is the high priest of On, or Heliopolis, the city of the solar mound, with its sacred pillar. The critics have a lot of explaining to do.

Pouring on adverbials and qualifiers does not explain. Witness the following look down the lorgnette: "Certainly, Ulishim could be superficially linked on phonetic grounds to the Olishem mentioned in the Book of Abraham. . . But a convincing identification would have to be based on much more substantial evidence" (Christopher Wood, "The Practice of Egyptian Religion at 'Ur of the Chaldees," in, Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition [2012; 2nd ed., 2013], 91). Well and good. Because we have not yet looked for, let alone found, the Ulishim of Naram-Sim, dogmatic conclusions remain premature. Yet Professor Wood, who transliterates the place name as both Ulishim and Ulishem, goes on to "explain" how "the phonetic similarity is accidental (and here it should be pointed out that cuneiform sources attest thousands of place names)," Ibid. 91. Thousands of names the record may yield, yet exactly how does such a cornucopia bestow upon the philologist the right to dismiss any "accidental"-though-clear "phonetic similarity"?

Cross-examination is in order: To what language family does the name Ulishim belong? Is it not Afroasiastic? in particular, may it not be West Semitic? If so, what might the West Semitic name mean? Should Uli-shim, perchance, register either height or heaven, or both, might the place, which seems to be a natural border, include a hill? In other words, besides the accidental phonetic similarity, are we also dealing with an accidental thematic correspondence? Does the one (accidental) correspondence in phonology necessarily presuppose the other?

Exactly how does a book of 14 pages produce dozens upon dozens of linguistic, cultural, thematic, theological, and literary points of comparison to the Ancient Near Eastern record? The numbers are no exaggeration. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with no hesitation whatsoever, not even a hint of abatement, continues to post the canonical Book of Abraham on line and to print copies by the tens of thousands in scores of languages. There is a lot of explaining to do.




Notes

Ulisum appears in "an inscription of the Akkadian king Naram Sin" (2250 BC), The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary (Richard Draper, S. Kent Brown, Michael Rhodes), 251, citing John M. Lundquist, "Was Abraham at Ebla?" in Studies in Scripture 2 (ed. Robert Millet and Kent Jackson, Provo, 1985), 233-34. The date is early but fits the idea of an archaic gathering-place. We know where Adam-ondi-Ahman is, and someday we shall also find Olishem. For the reading Ulisem/Ulishem/Olishem see John Gee, "A Tragedy of Errors," note 64 (published on the Neal A. Maxwell Institute Website).

This essay was originally posted in 2010, but modifications have been made and paragraphs added or moved about, from time to time. The paragraph assessing Christopher Wood's explanations was added in February 2014 (then itself modified, revised, reworked, from time to time--but esp. in September 2014, and again in Fall 2017).