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Ahiqar has long been familiar as an Assyrian sage who was the hero of a book that was read and preserved by Jews of antiquity. There is no doubt that the many versions of the work that bears his name are nonhistorical in character, but recent discoveries have made it quite likely that there once was an Assyrian scholar by this name who served in the time of Esarhaddon (680–669 b.c.e.). The name is spelled ˒ḥyqr in the Aramaic papyrus from Elephantine. It means “my brother is precious/valuable.”
A. Ahiqar in the Book of Ahiqar
The earliest extant form of the book is the fragmentary Aramaic text copied on a late-5th-century papyrus from Elephantine (Naveh 1970: 35). See also AHIQAR, BOOK OF. The text (text: Cowley 1923; translation: Lindenberger OTP 2: 479–507) describes him as “a wise and skillful scribe” (i.1: spr ḥkym wmhyr) who was “[ke]eper of the seal of Sennacherib” (i.3: ṣb]yt ˓zqth zyśnḥ˒ryb). He was also “father of all Assyria, on whose counsel King Sennacherib and [all] the Assyrian Army [used to rely]” (iv.55: ˒bwh zy ˒twr klh zy ˓l ˓ṭth snḥ˒ryb mlk˒ wḥyl ˒twr [kl˒ hww]). He continued to hold high office into the time of Sennacherib’s successor Esarhaddon (i.4–5), who calls him “O wise [s]cribe, counselor of all Assyria” (i.12: s]pr˒ ḥkym˒ y˓ṭ ˒twr klh). By this time, however, Ahiqar had reached an advanced age. As he had no son, he adopted his nephew Nadin and taught him his wisdom so that he could become his replacement. The nephew proved to be a scoundrel who plotted against his uncle and convinced Esarhaddon that he should be executed. (According to later, more complete versions of the story Nadin forged correspondence from Ahiqar which showed that he was scheming to seize the kingdom with foreign assistance.) A royal officer named Nabushumishkun was commissioned to kill Ahiqar, but the clever sage reminded him that under reversed circumstances he had saved the officer’s life. A eunuch was executed instead of Ahiqar, and the Nabushumishkun hid the fallen wise man in his house. The preserved portion of the Aramaic narrative ends at this point in the story. The fuller versions (e.g., the Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic) continue the tale by relating that Esarhaddon soon needed Ahiqar’s remarkable savoir faire because the Egyptian king, who had heard of the sage’s “death,” challenged the Assyrian monarch to send him someone who could construct a palace between heaven and earth. If he could, he would receive Egypt’s revenue for 3 years; if he could not, Egypt would receive a similar amount from Assyria. Just when Esarhaddon feared that the challenge would prove disastrously costly, the officer told him that Ahiqar was alive. He was swiftly retrieved from his hiding place and dispatched to Egypt where he handled all difficulties with astonishing flair. He returned with great wealth to Assyria where he promptly settled accounts with Nadin. After Ahiqar had beat him severely and lectured him at length, Nadin died.
B. Ahiqar in the Book of Tobit
Although the Ahiqar papyrus was found at the Jewish military colony at Elephantine, nothing in the text suggests Jewish authorship of the work or even Jewish influence on it. Indeed, the presence of divine names such as El (vii.107; x,154,156,161 [?]; xii. 173 [?]), Šamaš (vi.92, 93; vii.108; ix.138; xi.171) and Šamayn (? vii.95) betray a polytheistic origin for the book. In the deuterocanonical book of Tobit, however, Ahiqar has been transformed from an Assyrian to an Israelite of the tribe of Naphtali who is a relative of Tobit. Tobit, which may date from the 3d century b.c.e. (Doran 1986: 299), manifests a number of important similarities with the book of Ahiqar (Greenfield 1981: 329–36). Both are set in Assyria at the time of the kings who ruled around the time of the destruction of Samaria (Tobit mentions Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon [1:15–22]) and both are sapiential novels in which wise instructions are conveyed by an elderly character to his son at two similar locations. The book of Tobit mentions Ahiqar in four passages. In 1:21–22 Tobit reports that Esarhaddon “appointed Ahikar [Achicharon], son of my brother Anael to supervise all the finances of his kingdom; he had control of the entire administration. Then Ahikar interceded on my behalf and I came back to Nineveh. For he had been chief cupbearer, keeper of the privy seal, comptroller, and treasurer when Sennacherib was king of Assyria; and Esarhaddon renewed the appointments. Ahikar was my nephew and so one of my kinsmen” (NEB). The picture presented here resembles that in the book of Ahiqar except that the sage is now an Israelite. Later Tobit, after he became blind, notes that Ahikar cared for him for two years (2:10). Further evidence that the author of Tobit knew the Ahiqar story comes from 11:18 (v 19 in Greek) in which he mentions Ahiqar and Nadab (= Nadin), who are both identified as Tobit’s cousins (so Sinaiticus [hoi exadelphoi]) or, in Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, Nadab is called Ahikar’s nephew (ho exadelphos autou). Finally, 14:10 alludes to another part of the Ahiqar narrative: “My son, think what Nadab did to Ahikar who brought him up: he forced him to hide in a living grave. Ahikar survived to see God requite the dishonour done to him; he came out into the light of day, but Nadab passed into eternal darkness for his attempt to kill Ahikar. Because I [?] gave alms, Ahikar escaped from the fatal trap Nadab set for him, and Nadab fell into the trap himself and was destroyed” (NEB). The end of this passage reflects the words of the final proverb in Ahiqar (Syriac 8:41; Greenfield 1981: 333–34).
C. Other References
Several ancient writers mention a character whose name closely resembles that of Ahiqar; they may be referring to the hero of the book (Harris, Lewis, Conybeare APOT 2: 715–17; Küchler 1979: 344–46; Lindenberger OTP 2: 491). The Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215) claimed that the Greek author Democritus (ca. 460–370 b.c.e.) plagiarized from a stele of Ahiqar (tēn Akikarou stēlēn [Str. 1.69, 4]). In this connection, the Persian Muslim philosopher Shahrastani (1071–1153), in a collection of sayings from Democritus, cites three sayings which agree very closely with proverbs from the versions of Ahiqar. Strabo (ca. 63 b.c.e.–23 c.e.), in his Geography 16,2,39, gives from Poseidonius (135–51 b.c.e.) the names of famous seers; among them he names Achaikaros as being among the people from the Bosporus. It has been suggested that Bosporus is an error for Borsippa, so that the Mesopotamian savant could be intended (Harris, Lewis, Conybeare APOT 2: 716). This must be regarded, however, as quite uncertain. Diogenes Laertius (3d century c.e.) provides a list of the works by Theophrastus (372–287 b.c.e.), among which is one named Akicharosa. If all of these intend the Ahiqar known from the story and proverbs, they show that his fame, especially as a dispenser of wise words, was early and spread over a wider area than the Semitic world. The same could be concluded from the fact that the Greek Life of Aesop borrows heavily from the story and proverbs of Ahiqar in chaps. 23–32. It has also been suggested that Ahiqar’s name should be restored on the 3d-century c.e. Roman mosaic of Monnus in Trier. In it there are 9 octagonal sections in each of which are pictured a Muse with a symbol of the art with which she is connected and an expert in that art or founder of it. In the section for Polymnia, the Muse often associated with dance and mime, is a figure only part of whose name is preserved. The letters -icar could well be part of Acicarus or Ahiqar (Lindenberger OTP 2: 492), though combining him with Polymnia is surprising (Küchler 1979: 352–55).
D. Ahiqar as a Figure of History
There have been several attempts to relate aspects of the Ahiqar story to history. W. von Soden (1936: 1–13) argued that Adad-šum-uṣur, one of Esarhaddon’s advisors, was the historical point of origin for the Ahiqar legends. This official wrote many letters and exercised considerable influence in the court. As Ahiqar did, he requested from the king that his son Arad-Gula be given an important position. The son eventually did gain a post. Moreover, there is evidence that Adad-šum-uṣur fell from grace, though it is not known whether he was restored to his former status. But, as von Soden noted, no high official in the time of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon bore the name Ahiqar. In his opinion, a change of names took place during the transmission of the story so that Adad-šum-uṣur became Ahiqar. E. Reiner (1961: 7–8) has observed that the theme which provides the framework of the Ahiqar story—the “disgrace and rehabilitation of a minister”—was known in Babylonia and that it was fused with the other major theme—the “ungrateful nephew.” A recent discovery at the site of ancient Uruk has cast some interesting new light on the Ahiqar tradition. German excavations there in 1959–60 unearthed in a room next to the reš-sanctuary a tablet (W 20030, 7) which provides a list of Assyrian kings from before and after the flood (van Dijk 1962: 44–52). An official called an ummānu—a term for both a learned man and high official (Reiner 1961: 9)—is named for each of the kings. For the time of King Esarhaddon (11. 19–20) it mentions that a man named 1a-ba-dNINNU-da-ri (= aba-enlil-dari) was the ummānu and notes that the Ahlamu (= the Arameans) called him 1a-ḫu-’u-qa-a-ri. This is the name Ahuqar or Ahiqar. Consequently, there is now documentary evidence that Esarhaddon, who is the king with the primary royal role in the book of Ahiqar, had a chief advisor whose Aramaic name was the one found in the Aramaic version of the book. The list in which his name appears was copied in the year 147 of the Seleucid Era (= 165 b.c.e.), when Antiochus (IV) was king (11.23–24). It has also been noted that the only case of an Assyrian proverb that parallels one in Ahiqar (the Syriac version) is quoted in one of Esarhaddon’s letters (Greenfield 1981: 335 n. 20), and that the name Nabushumishkun is the same as that of Merodach-Baladan’s son who was taken captive by Sennacherib (Greenfield 1981: 335 n. 21).
It is clear from the reference to Ahiqar in the Uruk list that some sort of historical kernel lies behind the story. There was a wise man, possibly an author (Lindenberger 1983: 22), named Ahiqar in the court of Esarhaddon. Nevertheless, it is just as evident that the book which now bears his name has assumed folkloristic traits (Niditch and Doran 1977: 182–85) and can hardly be termed a historical document.
Bibliography
Cowley, A. 1923. Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. Oxford. Repr. Osnabrück, 1967.
Dijk, J. van. 1962. Die Inschriftenfunde. Pp. 39–62 in XVIII. vorläufiger Bericht über die von dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut und der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft aus Mitteln der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft unternommenen Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, ed. H. J. Lenzen. Berlin.
Doran, R. 1986. Narrative Literature. Pp. 287–310 in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. R. A. Kraft and G. W. E. Nickelsburg. The Bible and Its Modern Interpreters 2. Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Greenfield, J. C. 1981. Aḥiqar in the Book of Tobit. Pp. 329–36 in De la Torah au Messie, ed. J. Doré, P. Grelot, and M. Carrez. Paris.
Küchler, M. 1979. Frühjüdische Weisheit in den Achikar-Traditionen? Pp. 319–413 in Frühjüdische Weisheitstraditionen. OBO 26. Göttingen.
Lindenberger, J. M. 1983. The Proverbs of Ahiqar. JHNES. Baltimore.
Naveh, J. 1970. The Development of the Aramaic Script. Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 5/1. Jerusalem.
Niditch, S., and Doran, R. 1977. The Success Story of the Wise Courtier. JBL 96: 179–93.
Reiner, E. 1961. The Etiological Myth of the “Seven Sages.” Or 30: 1–11.
Soden, W. von. 1936. Die Unterweltsvision eines assyrischen Kronprinzen. ZA 43: 1–31.
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