Sargon the Magnificent

Sydney Bristowe

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787209541
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

In this book, first published in 1927, British painter and writer Sydney Bristowe describes her Cain-Sargon of Akkad equation theory. She asserts that, by reconstructing the ancient chronology of Mesopotamia based on the Cylinder of Nabonidus, the cylinder dates Naram-Sin, son of Sargon of Accad, 3200 years before Nabonidus, and so Sargon to c. 3800 BC. This contrasts sharply with mainstream scholarship which dates Sargon to the 23rd century BC. Bristowe defends the earlier dating from the cylinder and then argues that Sargon was the Biblical Cain.Her Cain-Sargon theory received support from British Israelites and proponents of Christian, and a sequel titled Cain—An Argument was subsequently published in 1950.

PART ONE

I—THE FLOODS HAVE FLOWN

“Great floods have flown

From simple sources, and great seas have dried

When miracles have by the greatest been denied.”

IT has been said that nothing worth proving can be proved, and certainly this applies to the theory put forward in this little book; but I hope to interest the reader in my attempt to show that the stories told in the first chapters of Genesis harmonise with the researches of modern archæologists, and provide a key to some otherwise unsolved problems.

It has not been easy to marshal the mass of evidence collected here, and a certain amount of reiteration of arguments and facts has been unavoidable; but I dare to think that after a careful and open-minded consideration of these pages some at least of my readers will be convinced that that mysterious personage, the great Babylonian monarch Sargon of Akkad, was none other than the first murderer in history—Cain. By showing that Cain and Sargon were one and the same and thus linking up the sacred and profane histories of the ancient world, I hope to refute the modern teaching that the Bible story of the Garden of Eden is mythical.

Up to the present the Babylonian inscriptions and drawings have interested comparatively few people, but those who accept my theory that Sargon of Akkad—who plays so large a part in them—was Cain, will agree that they should be of universal interest; for, granting this, there emerges from the tangled mass of evidence provided by those inscriptions and drawings a vast and sinister figure whose influence upon mankind far eclipses that of any other character in secular history. I shall endeavour to show that to his superhuman knowledge must be attributed the pre-historic civilisations now known to have existed in different parts of the globe, as well as the savage barbarism which accompanied them; and that to him must also be attributed the institution of idolatry—that poisoned chalice “the Golden Cup” of Babylon, which “made all the earth drunken” in olden times and whose dregs have still power to work mischief among men.

Although modern scholars seem to ignore the possibility that Cain may have influenced the history of the ancient world, three notable writers at the beginning of the Christian era (St. Jude, Josephus and Philo) suggested that Cain’s influence was evil and enduring; while a modern poet reminds us that, somewhere in the world, Cain’s descendants must have worked out their tragic destiny.

Lord Byron makes Lucifer say to Cain:

“First-born of the first man

Thy present state of sin—and thou art evil—

Of sorrow—and thou sufferest—are both Eden

In all its innocence compared to what

Thou shortly mays’t be; and that state again

In its redoubled wretchedness, a Paradise

To what thy sons’ sons’ sons, accumulating

In generations like to dust (which they

In fact but add to), shall endure and do.—

Now let us back to earth!”

And back to earth we too must come. To make poetry about Cain is one thing—to install him suddenly in secular history, or to try to do so, is another. This book is inevitably controversial and my task has been no light one in writing it, for I try as it were to build upon a site already occupied and to clear the site while building. When I add that the building to be cleared away is, in plain language, certain views set forth by well-known writers, my difficulties will, I am sure, be fully appreciated. The courage required for such a formidable undertaking comes from my conviction that while the views I oppose are entirely based upon modern discoveries, my theory derives support not only from those discoveries, but also from the Book of Genesis. This conviction, which I regard as my strength, will undoubtedly be looked upon by some people as a weakness; for it is now the fashion to decry the first chapters of Genesis, to ignore the possibility of their Divine Inspiration, to treat their historical information as fabulous, and to consider it unintelligent to believe in anything of a miraculous nature.

It is taught, sometimes even by the clergy, that the Old Testament stories owe their origin to the pagan traditions of Babylonia, but my object is to show that the beliefs and institutions of ancient Babylonia, and of other lands as well, confirm the historical truth of the Bible instead of discrediting it. I maintain that unless we accept its stories as true history we are, although “ever learning...never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

The men who ignore these stories are, however, accepted as authorities, they carry weight and have the public ear; it may indeed seem bold to question their conclusions. These, however, fortunately for my purpose, do not always agree and are often indefinite and liable to be changed at any time to suit new theories brought forward. Sir James Frazer, for instance, has lately thrown doubt upon the prevailing opinion held by Assyriologists that the Babylonian myths upon which the Genesis stories are supposed to be modelled were evolved by the first inhabitants of that land, and has suggested instead that they may have originated in Africa, travelled thence into Babylonia and later on have found their way into the Hebrew literature.{1} This conjecture he bases on the recent discovery that traditions reminiscent of that literature, such as those of a fall of man and a serpent tempter, exist among the tribes of the Tanganyika Territory in Africa. Considering, however, that the earliest rulers in Egyptian history are now believed to have gone into Africa from Asia{2} it is surely, on the face of it, much more probable that those stories were taken by them into Africa, and there corrupted into the grotesque traditions found among the African tribes.

By comparing and contrasting the Biblical and Babylonian stories, and by bringing forward fresh evidence (or at least evidence which has so far passed unnoticed), I hope to show that the Bible stories do not owe their origin to Babylonian myths and legends, but that they are, on the contrary, true history.

II—THE BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

BEFORE looking for Cain in the Babylonian inscriptions a short account of those inscriptions, of their arrival in England and America, and of the effect they produced there, must be given.

On the site of the palace of King Assur-bani-pal, where once had stood the city of Sennacherib King of Assyria, thousands of brick tablets have been found, upon some of which, inscribed in cuneiform characters, are mythological versions of the stories told in the Book of Genesis about the Creation of the World, the Garden of Eden and the Deluge. The date of the tablets is thought to be about 700 B.C. and they are believed to be copies of much older writings which Assur-bani-pal had caused to be collected from all parts of his kingdom and stored in his library. Many of these fragments were brought to England towards the end of the last century, and the late Mr. George Smith of the British Museum was the first to transliterate and make known to the public these “Genesis stories.”

Although these Babylonian stories are replete with the names of gods and goddesses, they are in some ways so like those in the first chapters of Genesis that they were joyfully received at first as new evidence of the truth of the Bible records. Professor Kittel of Leipzig writes:

“When, therefore, George Smith was fortunate enough to discover in the year 1887 cuneiform inscriptions containing the account of the Flood, the expressions of delight beyond the Channel and Atlantic knew no bounds. Sermons from the pulpit and whole columns from the Daily Press were filled with accounts of the discovery...every doubt of the sceptic and every sneer of the mocker, it was thought, in regard to the Bible would be utterly and inevitably confounded.”

In 1903 he wrote:

“A very different picture presents itself before our eyes today. A period of sobriety and in many cases of depression has followed that of jubilation and enthusiasm. In the family of oriental studies Assyriology is the latest born. It need not be a matter of wonder, therefore, if in individual instances representatives of the new knowledge should not have always been able to shake off the childlike love of sensation. Formerly men were attracted to the study of the monuments with the hope of finding arguments on behalf of the Bible: now, the contemporaries of Nietzsche and Haeckel find there is a much greater prospect of attention being directed to the ne...