The Links between Etemenanki and Ba'al Zebul?

Before I start, please take the time to read through all of this. I am by no means an expert of this region but while doing my own research I have began to formulate my own theory.

Ba’al is a North-West semantic word signifying 'The Lord, master, owner (male), husband'.
Zebul is the North-West semantic word translatable as “Of the High Place.”

Recently, I cam across a guy called Thomas Kelly Cheyne, who was a writer and a Biblical critic. He claimed that the early Jewish Religion and many other Religions of the Region would [after war] slightly alter the name of the land they conquest and the Gods those people worshipped. Thus several generations later their God would in fact be aligned with a negative aspect. He put forward the idea that Ba’al Zebul was the correct name and meant The Lord of the High Place. Recently their have been findings that seem to back his assessment [and many other authors] that names had been changed and meaning of words had [El for example.] So that Ba’al Zebul became Ba‘al Zəbûb and in turn because the “Lord of the Flies” a negative name and only slightly different so very easy to defend from criticism.

Now this is where my personal theory comes into play.

After reading up on the Etemenanki I began to dig a bit deeper. So far [at least from what I have searched] their has been no major findings of when it was actually built although it is placed before the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) and from the maps I have looked at would be roughly classified as the same region the word Ba’al Zebul came from. Which got me into thinking about the two combined. This [whatever it is [since we don’t know]] could in fact be several years older -maybe even several thousand. During this period the only other major monuments would have been the Pyramids [in the region] and that would have been rather far away. The rebuilt version of the monument [which is assumed to be a temple] hit 91meters. This is roughly 299feet the Great Pyramid is only 481feet.

There are two questions:

Is it possible that the Eyemenanki was built prior to the pyramids or by a group of people who did not know of the Pyramids? [In Giza]
Is it possible that this was the Temple build for the “Lord of the High Place”?

Edit:

I thought I would include an image of it:


[edit on 8/9/2005 by Odium]

Since I posted the first piece of information, I found myself becoming more intrigued in the subject. I began to search across that which is cyber-space and found some rather interesting pieces of information.

Source
Lord of the flies; a god of the Philistines, popularly worshiped as the destroyer of flies, to whom was erected a temple at Ekron. The mythical zoology of the ancients points directly to an inner and mystical significance: "flies" is used not in the sense of the insect, but for a certain class of elementals whose "flying" around and through the earth is governed directly by lunar influences. Thus Beelzebub is in this connection a lunar divinity.

Ba`al-zebul, a form in the Old and New Testaments, is translated as Lord of the High House or Lord of the Habitation, the reference here being to the moon as the habitation or receptacle of these elemental souls at a certain time of their existence.

Source: New International Version
Matthew 12:2: “But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons."

Matther 12:27 “And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges.”

2 Kings 1:2 “Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, "Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury."“

Source
The city of Ekron (Hebrew עֶקְרוֹן, Standard Hebrew ʻEqron, Tiberian Hebrew ʻEqrôn) was one of the five Philistine cities in southwestern Canaan. It was a border city on the frontier contested between Philistia and Judah, at a site, now Tel Mikne, near the small village Akir, some 35 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem, and 11 miles north of Gath, on the western edge of the inner coastal plain. Excavations in 1981-1996 at the low square tel, have made Ekron one of the best-documented Philistine sites.

Source
Marduk [mär'dook] (Sumerian spelling in Akkadian AMAR.UTU "solar calf"; Biblical Merodach) was the name of a late generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BC), rose to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon.

As I looked more into this, their seem to be claims made by people that during the Reign of Hammurabi that this place was built -however, there is no evidence given which makes it conclusive. In fact, there seem to be no documented records of it existing for the purpose of a God whose popularity only began to rise during the period of conquest which was going on and brings into question why two temples [Esagila] would also be built. To me it seems almost seems as though they have evidence one [near the other] was built for this purpose and thus they link them both together.

I myself propose that this Temple was actually built before the Babylonian’s took control of the region and that this was the fertile region which Ba’al ZeBul once ruled over. I also have began to believe that Ba’al ZeBul like so many people of the era wasn’t a God but actually a person on Earth and from the Region going as far as to think he might have been their ruler and like so many of the time associated himself with a God.

Once the region began to prosper [several years] word could have spread and the tales of this person could have spread resulting in the fables changing. From him not being a ruler who claimed to be a God, but a God who is currently guiding his people. Over time and a lack of written records [primarily around the Temple] the story has changed and like so many other early religions those that were worshipped have been distorted by more modern religions.

This image displays the whole of the Region once the Babylonian's had taken over. The image clearly displays an artistic view of how it would once have stood and clearly Eyemenanki is the "High Place" in the Region.



This is an interior map of the top level [the temple] and displays stairs leading down to inside the Eyemenanki [as far as my understanding goes.]

In my personnal opinion, I think that the Eyemenanki was in fact built prior to the invasion of the Babylonian Army under Hammurabi. It was built as either a place or a temple or even the resting place of "Ba'al Zebul". Not a God, but a man who was the ruler of that small region. Once the area was taken over the dominating force took control of the "Temple" and began to place their own myths and legands about it - this again happened at the height of the Christian Religion and in turn leaves us with a warped meaning of Ba'al Zebul.

Not a God but a man, the man who was the "Lord" of the "High Place". His temple/home/palace being that High Place and the Babylonain buildings standing on the foundations of those who were their before them.

Wow ODIUM!

Your doing such a great job with this thread! Your background info is being well presented I am impressed........I hope other posters will see this as a shining example of a well presented post!

Good Job!

Originally posted by theRiverGoddess
Wow ODIUM!

Your doing such a great job with this thread! Your background info is being well presented I am impressed........I hope other posters will see this as a shining example of a well presented post!

Good Job!

Thank you very much. I hardly ever can find a subject I enjoy to write about, however the idea I am putting forward I have yet to see anywhere so I thought I would give it a try.

Who knows I might be right?

Thank you once more.

Source
Ba'al is the Canaanite and Phoenician god most actively worshipped, source of the rains and mists which nourish the crops. Therefore he is considered responsible for fertility, particularly of the Earth, for the growth of vegetation, and for the maintenance of life. He cares for the multitudes, the masses of humanity. While the word "ba'al" means simply "master" or "owner," he is considered a prince. Ba'al is a dynamic, executive force. He is often depicted striding forward (not seated like El), wearing a horned helmet and short wrap kilt of a warrior (whereas El wears a long robe), and carrying a mace and spear or lightning-bolt staff. Remnants of his worship remain in the Jewish prayerbook, when in late spring there is a prayer for dew, and in late fall, a prayer for rain.

Ba'al is the son of Dagan/Dagnu, god of agriculture and storms (a deity important at Emar, a basically Canaanite city much older than Ugarit and closer to Mesopotamia), and not actually a son of 'El. Documentation exists called "The Installation of the High Priestess of Ba'al at Emar" (unfortunately not a ritual text, but an outline of the procedure, probably something of a mnemonic device), and it is important to remember that male priests did not exclusively serve the gods, nor female priestesses the goddesses; males and females could serve either; there was no sexual or gender equivalance in religious service.

Ba'al the word itself does not seem to come from the same route that El would have came from. Which moves me back to the idea that "Ba'al" is nothing more than a title.

For example the above source quotes a passage from the Hebrew corpus which says; "Yahwuh is my Ba'al." This leads me back to the idea that Ba'al is just a title for the word "Lord" [which is what is mostly accepted.]

The second part of the name is where we have the problem.

Wikipedia gives these possibilities:

• Ba‘al Zəbûb: Lord of Flies
  
• Ba'al Zebûb: The Lord of an Unknown place [Zebûb] or;
  
• Ba'al Zebul: Lord of the High Place
  

But when look at what the Bible says he is called a "Prince", which again brings me to the conclussion that he was the ruler who over time became a God. Primarily because the only evidence for him being a "God" is as the "Lord of Flies" which even as a previous source suggests as flies being used to also mean "High Place" does not allow for the link between him as a fertility God.

Instead I think he was but a ruler during a period of great fertility in the region, where rain, mists, etc, were more common [even during the period of him becoming Prince/being born] and once he died out he was worshipped once more to bring these rains back...

Originally posted by Odium
would [after war] slightly alter the name of the land they conquest and the Gods those people worshipped. Thus several generations later their God would in fact be aligned with a negative aspect.

He was the first to claim this? This is, i beleive, what many say happened with the gods of the natives to the british isles, they became malevolent fairies, dwarves, trolls, leprechauns, etc.

He put forward the idea that Ba’al Zebul was the correct name and meant The Lord of the High Place.

What god is called this?? What I mean is, did he merely take the two words and put them toghether, or is this the name of an actual god? Recall that amoung the Latins the high god of the skys is Jupiter, and that in sanskrit there words for Sky Father are 'dyaeus pater' (or somesuch). Thus indicating a linguistic connnection, but there is no hindu god who's name is Dyaeus Pater.
Livius.orgnotes

This must be the building known as E-temen-an-ki, the 'House of the foundation of heaven on earth', a giant mountain of bricks and tiles with, on top, a temple for the god Marduk

[emph added]

They also state that all that can be said is that its older than 689 BC, when its first mentioned anywhere. They seem to say that, under hammurabi, babylon was effectively the capital of the world, and since smaller towns had ziggurates, babylon would've had a really big one. Which might explain why hammurabi is usually said to have built it, but obviously it could be exceedingly old.

Interstingly also is that, according to the same site, Bayblon was invaded by the semites, the natives were a different population, and the oldest foundations of the city are thought to be below the water line, and thus unexcavatable. This does seem to permit that it could be excessively old and that the god-name was degenerated by invaders.

I have looked at would be roughly classified as the same region the word Ba’al Zebul came from.

Perhaps more importantly, the culture that replaces this Bezelbub is the hebrew one, and their own biblical history says that they came from the babylonian region, and they were also taken back to babylon as a slave ethnicity.

this again happened at the height of the Christian Religion and in turn leaves us with a warped meaning of Ba'al Zebul.

I don't know if I am understanding your timeline correctly, but hammurabi was in babylon far before christianity existed. And itseems like the only peopel who have a god of flies is the people in the levant, not the peopel in mesopotamia. I think that you'd need to show that there was ever a god called BalZebub in the first place, and especially show that this god was in the levant. The mere existence of a high temple isn't particularly relevatory, temples are the high points in every city of this period.

Also, I simply don't think that one can reasonably hypothesize that this god was a person, and that he was speificially king of babylon, lived in a ziggurat, and was displaced by hammurabi, merely on a similarity between bezelbub and the 'lord on high' and that ziggurats are high.

Its an interesting idea tho. To make a little analogy tho, your idea is a temple, fanciful and intriguing, however its foundation can't support it; your ziggurat is about to topple over. (not trying to be harsh, just like the analogy)

Anyway, here's Marduk, who I think you are equating with this BalZebul


Intersetingly, herodotus reports, (via livius.org)

The Chaldaeans also say -though I do not believe them- that the god enters the temple in person and takes his rest upon the bed.

However the livius site authors caution:

He goes on to make a comparison with a similar Egyptian ritual, and this betrays him: on several occasions, Herodotus offers comparisons between Babylonia and Egypt, and in those cases, he is always wrong and may be repeating a story told by Egyptian priests. The story about the woman and the god belongs to this category.

www.masters-table.org...

This paper, focusing on the zoroasterians,
notes:

This fire-worship the Persian Magi did not pretend to have invented; but their popular story carried the origin of it up to the days of Hoshang, the father of Tahmurs, who founded Babylon (WILSON, pp. 202, 203, and 579)---i.e., the time of Nimrod. In confirmation of this, we have seen that a fragment of Apollodorus (Muller, 68) makes Ninus the head of the fire-worshippers. Layard, quoting this fragment, supposes Ninus to be different from Zoroaster (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 443, Note); but it can be proved, that though many others bore the name of Zoraster, the lines of evidence all converge, so as to demonstrate that Ninus and Nimrod and Zoroaster were one.

The rest is interesting, but I can't personally speak to its accuracy, its somewhat dubious that its annonymous, but perhaps the author can be searched for. It seems to be something of an attempt ot bring reality to bibilical history as in genesis tho, and the author's statement that zoroasterians are fire-worshipers seems especially inaccurate, since, well, the zoroasterians insist that they aren't fire-worshippers. And I'd tend to think that they know!

Isn't nimrod supposed to infact be the king who was invovled in the building of the tower, or am I confused here? However, if this is the time of the foundation of the city, the pressence of nimrod would seem to prevent there being another supreme ruler. Tho perhaps the chief of preists can be the historical person that you are looking for.

Perhaps in this connection then BaalZebul is none other than Zoroaster!

This page notes

HISTORY
Around 2200 BCE: Babylon is reported as the site of a temple.
Around 2050: Babylon is part of a state ruled from the city of Ur.
About 1894: Babylon becomes an independent city state, under the Amorite king Sumu-abum.

Thank you for taking the time to comment Nygdan.

I’ll just clear up what I meant by a few of the points:

From my understanding, he has taken the meaning of “Flies” to represent that which one of my sources in fact use and claim that flies would have originally meant “"flies" is used not in the sense of the insect, but for a certain class of elementals whose "flying" around and through the earth is governed directly by lunar influences.” there have also been other claims about Ba’al Zebul and his links to early Islamic Religion. It is believed by a few people [the article has also been on this site] that the reason for the Star and Moon being such an iatrical part of Islamic Tradition is that it was away to help unite the people of [what is now] Saudi Arabia who are recorded as worshipping a “Ba’al Zebul” type figure - including a roughly translated name and lead recently to accusations of the Islamic Religion being in fact Ba’al Zebul worshippers.

From then he suggests that the name was slightly changed as away to insult their God/Ruler. This would then be reported as him being a God of Insects over the years which is when you thought about a very foolish concept. It makes no sense that such a powerful deity would really be associated with such things [insects/flies.]

The link between the moon and fertility [of crops especially] I have seen linked to events happening at night. For example during the periods when rulers claimed to be Gods they used things such as natural disasters to claim “God” was punishing the people for doubting his leadership skills or for not working hard enough. This was seen up till well in the 1600’s where these leaders used their power and ability to corrupt Religion for their own gains but it also went the other way. People believed that if their crops turned out well or their was a great harvest and this lasted for years [3-5 year cycle] then in fact God was happy with them and the ruler would again use this as away to abuse the people and keep control. When today we know such things are down to many factors and is about as smart as claiming Katrina was punishment for having a Democratic Governor of Louisiana.

On who he actually is? I myself am not 100% sure. I’m not trying to equate him with any one specific Babylonian Leader however when looked in the context of what the Judeo-Christian Religions have done it’s very possibly they turned their enemies into aspects of evil so that more people would turn against them. This could be linked to the problems between the Babylonian Empire and the Early Judaic Religions and comparable to what the Early Christian Church did to Nero. Turning Nero - the enemy of the Church at that period - into the anti-Christ and in turn warning Christian’s against him but also [even accidentally] forcing them to hate him. The idea of the “Number of the Beast” [616/666] still being an important aspect of the Church to this day…

[The Earlier Statement about Christianity should have been Judaic-Christian not Christian.]

As for Ba’al Zebul is known to be worshipped in the Philistine city of Ekron. The period I have it at is existing is roughly somewhere between 3000bc and 1800bc when the worshipped is assumed to have began. Ekron was known to be a City prior to the Iron-Age [1200bc.] In fact it was rebuilt during this period on older-foundations. Its main Public Building was burned down in 1300bc however prior to this we have no clue when it was actually founded. However, what I find highly interesting is that they know Ba’al Zebul came from within this region and was worshipped however from recent findings Ekron seems to have worshipped a female deity at the top of their religion.

When you take into account that the Bible mentions him as a God and then the King who wishes for his help is killed. This does to me look like nothing more than the very Early Church wishing to create an enemy out of this Ba’al Zebul figure especially by implying that God would punish you for death even for attempting to get medical help from him and can be linked to other stories where fear was used to control people. For example the case of the two boys who speak ill of God and then are killed by a bear. We also by looking through the Bible can find many geographical problems with their fables and seemingly using a City name because they knew of the City and knew they did not worship their lord.

The reason I link it up to the Etemenanki, is because the Temple prior to Hammurabi seems to have existed. The archeologically digs on the site seem to point to it being rebuilt during his reign your source again I think points out there was an Older Temple there. Ekron worshipping him or paying respect to him is in accordance to several things that the Canaanite people seem to have done. I do believe there have been findings of other Kinds [from miles away] mentioned in other Canaanite Cities. In fact if you look at what happened to Gilgamesh until recently he has never really been accepted as a historical figure until the information on Enmebaragesi of Kish was founded. The reason I point this out is until then we only had the Epic of Gilgamesh to reference now with the alabaster vase fragments the validity of the Sumerian King List is highly validated. Now the Epic of Gilgamesh seems to be a highly exaggerated version of the persons life which is what I suggest happened to Ba’al Zebul.

Now the reason I link it to Etemenanki is also because I have founded sources which seem to display the Early Ziggurats as watch-towers to the moon - similar to that which the Mayan’s had used some of their temples for, the Etemenanki from some reports I have seen has windows where light will only be cast in during the equinoxes and also works as an observatory for the moon.

I linked this in with the regions ability to grow crops and how fertile it was.
The fact that there was an older-temple to someone there and the fact the most important temple to the Babylonian people was that of Esagila but much smaller then the Etemenanki doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Enuma Elish seems to imply that the Etemenanki was there before the Temple of Esaggila was built. Also if they were both built at the same time why isn’t the larger more dominant structure built for your supreme God?
The link between the meaning of the name and what the Tower looked like.

[I hope that clears it up a bit more for you and what I am trying to say. A possible link between Zoroaster and the Temple could further help explain this. Although I’ll have to look into his name and what it would be in Hebrew which I have yet to find.]

[edit on 9/9/2005 by Odium]