wished to describe a man as being a great hunter, they
spoke of him as 'like Nimrod'" (Dri.).—The expression
(
Hebrew characters) doubtless belongs to the proverb: the precise
meaning is obscure (v.i.).
A perfectly convincing Assyriological prototype of the figure of
Nimrod has not as yet been discovered. The derivation of the name
from Marduk, the tutelary deity of the city of Babylon, first propounded
by Sayce, and adopted with modifications by We.,[1] still commends
itself to some Assyriologists (Pinches, DB, iii. 552 f.; cf. KAT3, 581);
but the material points of contact between the two personages seem too
vague to establish an instructive parallel. The identification with Nazi-Maruttaš,
a late (c. 1350) and apparently not very successful king of the
Kaššite dynasty (Haupt, Hilprecht, Sayce, al.), is also unsatisfying: the
supposition that that particular king was so well known in Palestine as to
eclipse all his predecessors, and take rank as the founder of Babylonian
civilisation, is improbable. The nearest analogy is that of Gilgameš,[2]
the legendary tyrant of Erech (see v.10), whose adventures are recorded
in the famous series of Tablets of which the Deluge story occupies
the eleventh (see p. 175 above, and KAT3, 566 ff.). Gilgameš is a true
Gibbôr—"two parts deity and one part humanity"—he builds the walls
of Erech with forced labour, and his subjects groan under his tyranny,
until they cry to Aruru to create a rival who might draw off some of his
superabundant energy (KIB, vi. 1, 117, 119). Among his exploits, and
those of his companion Ea-bani, contests with beasts and monsters
figure prominently; and he is supposed to be the hero so often represented
on seals and palace-reliefs in victorious combat with a lion (see
ATLO2, 266 f.). It is true that the parallel is incomplete; and (what
is more important) that the name Nimrod remains unexplained. The
expectation that the phonetic reading of the ideographic GIŠ. ṬU. BAR
might prove to be the Bab. equivalent of the Heb. Nimrod, would seem
to have been finally dispelled by the discovery (in 1890) of the correct
pronunciation as Gilgameš (but see Je. l.c.). Still, enough general
resemblance remains to warrant the belief that the original of the
biblical Nimrod belongs to the sphere of Babylonian mythology. A
striking parallel to the visit of Gilgameš to his father Ut-napištim
occurs in a late Nimrod legend, preserved in the Syrian Schatzhöhle
(see Gu. Schöpf. 1462; Lidz. ZA, vii. 15). On the theory which connects
Nimrod with the constellation Orion, see Tu. ad loc.; Bu. Urg.
395 f.; KAT3, 5812; and on the late Jewish and Mohammedan legends
generally, Seligsohn, JE, ix. 309 ff.
- ↑ Sayce (TSBA, ii. 243 ff.) derived it from the Akkadian equivalent
of Marduk, Amar-ud, from which he thought Nimrudu would be
a regular (Ass.) Niphal form. We. (Comp.2 309 f.) explains the (
Hebrew characters) as an
Aram. impf. preformative to the [root] (Hebrew characters), a corruption from Mard-uk which
took place among the Syrians of Mesopotamia, through whom the myth
reached the Hebrews.
- ↑ So Smith-Sayce, Chald. Gen. 176 ff.; Je. Isdubar-Nimrod.
