“And His Brothers Were Jealous of Him”: Surprising Parallels Between Joseph and King Esarhaddon of Assyria

043

All over the world people hold the relationship between brothers in high esteem. That relationship is considered a model for other forms of human interaction. The religious think of their fellow believers as “brothers in faith”; the secular consider the relationship as the French Revolution’s ideal of “fraternité.”

In the ancient Near East, things were very much the same: Babylonian and Assyrian letter writers, for example, regularly addressed each other in their messages as “brothers.” So did the great kings who wrote to each other in the famous Amarna letters (c. 1400 B.C.E.).,^a

This almost universal appreciation of brotherhood seems at odds, however, with the numerous stories that deal with hostile brothers’ relationships and the violence that results from their mutual dislike. Examples are numerous, both in the Bible and elsewhere in literature and history, from Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau to Eteocles and Polynices, Romulus and Remus, and Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland.

The Franco-American scholar René Girard has observed that the close proximity that draws brothers together is, somewhat paradoxically, also what more than anything triggers deadly strife between them.¹ Brothers resemble each other with regard to their physical and mental characteristics but also with regard to the objects they desire—whether a woman, a throne or a father’s estate. This mimetic desire, which can find fulfillment for one of them only, may easily lead to bloody conflict.

One of the most famous narratives about hostile brothers is the Biblical story of Joseph, told in Genesis 37–50. Joseph is a younger son of his father, Jacob. He has ten elder brothers, born from Jacob’s first wife Leah and two slave-women, and a younger brother, Benjamin, who like Joseph is the offspring of Jacob’s 044 younger wife, Rachel. The relationship between Joseph and his elder brothers is tense from the beginning. Jacob, who “loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age” (Genesis 37:3), gives him a precious robe. When the elder brothers become aware of their father’s partiality for Joseph, they begin to hate their younger sibling. They become even more incensed when Joseph tells them of two dreams that seem to suggest he will rule over them one day. In the first dream, sheaves bound by his brothers bow down to Joseph’s sheaf, and in the second, the sun, the moon and eleven stars prostrate themselves before him. Jacob scolds Joseph for his arrogant ambitions but “kept the matter in mind” (Genesis 37:11).

Later, Jacob sends Joseph to his brothers, who are pasturing flocks at Dothan. The brothers throw Joseph into a pit and then sell him to a merchant caravan headed for Egypt. There, Joseph experiences a series of highs and lows, the latter including a false accusation of rape by the wife of his employer Potiphar and a subsequent prison sentence. But after interpreting two dreams of Pharaoh as indicating that seven years of abundance will be followed by seven years of want—and suggesting measures to cope with the impending crisis—Joseph becomes Pharaoh’s second-in-command. Some time later, his family back in Israel, ravished by famine, moves to Egypt. Following several twists and turns, Joseph finally reveals to his father and brothers his true identity. The narrative ends on a happy note: Jacob blesses his sons, and Joseph forgives his brothers.

045

The story of Joseph has had a tremendous impact on later literature, from Classical antiquity to modern times.² Adaptations include a novel about Joseph and his wife, Joseph and Aseneth, composed during the first centuries C.E. and known from manuscripts in Greek, Syriac and other languages; the twelfth sura of the Qur’an, which is named after Joseph (Yūsuf); the Persian verse composition “Yusuf-o Zulaikha” by the Sufi poet Jami (1414–1492); and last but not least, Thomas Mann’s great four-part novel Joseph and His Brothers written between 1926 and 1943. In its final volume, “Joseph the Provider,” Mann attributes to Joseph qualities of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt.³

Almost all scholars now agree that the Joseph story is not a faithful historical account, even though some believe that it may include vague allusions to the Hyksos period (17th and 16th centuries B.C.E.), when Semites from Canaan became the rulers of Egypt. Based on factual, linguistic and literary criteria, many contemporary Hebrew Bible scholars assume that the Joseph story, or at least a first version of it, was composed during the interval between the downfall of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C.E. to the Assyrians and the fifth century B.C.E., when the Judeans had returned from Babylon. A few scholars consider an even later date of composition more feasible.⁴

While several parallels between the Joseph story and Egyptian texts have been identified, I would like to discuss a largely unexplored parallel, which leads us from Egypt to Mesopotamia: The story of the rise of Joseph shares uncanny similarities with that of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon, who ruled much of Western Asia from 680 to 669 B.C.E.

Our main sources for the reconstruction of the events that led to Esarhaddon’s accession to the Assyrian throne are some of the king’s own inscriptions, especially a text known as Nineveh A.⁵ Here, Esarhaddon reports with unusual candor that he was not the oldest son of his father and predecessor Sennacherib. Esarhaddon had a number of elder brothers. Nonetheless, at some point Sennacherib decided to make Esarhaddon his heir apparent. Liver divination undertaken in the name of the sun-god Šamaš and the weather god Adad confirms the appointment. And both the people of Assyria and Esarhaddon’s brothers swear loyalty to the new crown prince.

The brothers, however, are not happy with this 046 047 course of events. Jealous and full of resentment, they conspire against Sennacherib’s new succession designation. Sennacherib is affected by their machinations and finally distances himself from his newly minted heir. Secretly, however, Sennacherib continues to wish that Esarhaddon will become king after him. In the meantime, Esarhaddon leaves the capital Nineveh and takes refuge in an unspecified safe location somewhere in the West. Soon after, the brothers “go mad” and commit “deeds that are deeply offensive to the gods and mankind”—a thinly veiled allusion to the fact that, as other sources indicate, they murdered Sennacherib, on the 20th day of the month of Ṭebētu (Tevet), 681/680 B.C.E. But the brothers are not to reap any rewards from their actions. Esarhaddon returns to Assyria with a small army, chases the regicides away and, encouraged by prophetic oracles, ascends the Assyrian throne.

Some scholars have questioned the historical reliability of Esarhaddon’s report, suggesting that, in fact, Esarhaddon himself was behind the murder of his father.⁶ But the report is confirmed by additional texts, lending support to Esarhaddon’s claims. A letter from the early years of Esarhaddon’s reign identifies Esarhaddon’s brother Urda-Mullissi as the murderer of Sennacherib.⁷ Urda-Mullissi is well known from a number of Assyrian documents and was probably Sennacherib’s original heir apparent. He is also mentioned in the Bible; 2 Kings 19:37 reports that “his [Sennacherib’s] sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword,” before “Esarhaddon succeeded him.” “Adrammelech” is undoubtedly a garbled form of Urda-Mullissi,⁸ and Sharezer (= Assyrian Šarru-uṣur) may well have been another son of Sennacherib, even though he is not yet securely attested in the cuneiform textual record.

The northern Kingdom of Israel was part of the Assyrian Empire in 681 B.C.E. when these events would have taken place. Judah, the southern kingdom, although formally ruled by Manasseh, was an Assyrian vassal state. It is therefore hardly surprising that the leading circles in Jerusalem were well informed about the events that led to Esarhaddon’s rise to power following Sennacherib’s demise. This is something to keep in mind when we return to our original question—the parallels between the story of Joseph and the story of Esarhaddon.

In broad strokes, these parallels can be summarized as follows: In both cases, we are dealing with elder brothers resenting the promotion by their father of a younger son, of whom they are envious. The fathers, Jacob and Sennacherib, are both to some extent aware that the preferences they show are unjust but cannot 048 be persuaded to abandon their choices entirely. And both sons, Joseph as well as Esarhaddon, after initially suffering humiliating defeats, eventually triumph and rise to high office.

At first glance, these parallels may seem rather vague. One could argue that they reflect little else than the universal nature of the theme of fraternal rivalry. Yet a close reading of the two stories reveals a number of more specific similarities. Both deal with conflicts between several elder and one younger brother. In both cases, that younger brother has a mother other than the mother of the elder ones: Joseph is the firstborn son of Rachel, Jacob’s second wife; Esarhaddon is the firstborn son of Naqī’a, Sennacherib’s second wife.⁹

According to the Bible, Jacob encountered Rachel near Ḫarrān, the Upper Mesopotamian hometown of her father Laban (Genesis 27:43, etc.), for whom Jacob would work for 20 years. As Erle Leichty of the University of Pennsylvania has suggested,¹⁰ Ḫarrān may also have been the ancestral home of Sennacherib’s wife Naqī’a. While this remains to be proven, there is no question that Esarhaddon was deeply interested in Ḫarrān and invested heavily in its temples. In fact, he had himself crowned there a second time in 671 B.C.E.¹¹

Another parallel between the two stories is that the promotion of their respective protagonists is announced and justified through supernatural signs: dreams in the case of Joseph and liver omens and prophecy in the case of Esarhaddon.¹²

The reactions of the elder brothers are similar as well. They are said to have “hated” their younger sibling (śənō in Genesis 37:8, iddanabbubū zērāti in Esarhaddon’s Nineveh A inscription, i 28) and to have been jealous of him. The words used to express this jealousy, wayqan’ū in Genesis 37:11 and qīnu in Nineveh A, i 23, derive from the same Semitic root, qn’, which is common in Hebrew but rare in Akkadian. Joseph’s brothers ask him, “Are you indeed to reign (hă-mālōḵ timlōḵ) over us?” (Genesis 37:8). The Hebrew root mlk is the same from which the word meleḵ “king” is derived, and even though one could explain the brothers’ question as figurative speech, it is still remarkable that they refer to Joseph as a potential “king,” a position that Esarhaddon actually held.

The way the two fathers deal with the situation is also very much the same. Jacob, while critical of Joseph, is said to have “kept the matter [of Joseph’s dreams] in mind” (šāmar ’eṯ-haddāḇār, Genesis 37:11). Sennacherib listens to his elder sons maligning Esarhaddon, but “deep down (šaplānu),” we are told, “he was compassionate, and his eyes remained fixed on my [Esarhaddon’s] exercising kingship” (Nineveh A, i 30–31).

A last important parallel between the two stories is that their protagonists both had close connections with Egypt. Joseph experienced his greatest defeats and triumphs in Egypt, where he rose to the position of “governor” or “vizier” (šallîṭ, Genesis 42:6) 049 and eventually died, being “110 years old” (Genesis 50:26). As for Esarhaddon, his most remarkable victory was his conquest of Egypt in 671 B.C.E., three years after an initial attack by his troops had been thwarted. Egypt’s fall to the Assyrians, possibly with support from the Judahite king Manasseh, was a triumph for the conquerors and a traumatic experience for the Egyptians. In 669 B.C.E., Esarhaddon went on yet another campaign to Egypt, in the course of which he died.

Even though there is no proof, these parallels suggest that the author(s) of the Joseph story borrowed a number of key motifs from the story of Esarhaddon’s rise to power. What remains unclear is at what time this borrowing occurred: in the immediate aftermath of Esarhaddon’s reign or much later. Both timeframes are feasible.

Although Assyrian royal inscriptions were normally addressed to a rather limited audience, mostly members of the Assyrian elite and later Assyrian kings, Esarhaddon’s account of how he had become king may have circulated more widely. It seems to have been composed with the purpose of preparing Esarhaddon’s subjects for the king’s own succession arrangement, aimed at making his son Assurbanipal the next king, and one can easily imagine that some version of it was disseminated in conjunction with the loyalty oaths Esarhaddon imposed on Assyrians and Assyrian vassals alike in 672 B.C.E. That these loyalty oaths were also sworn by the political elites of Judah is indicated by the fact that portions of an early version of the Biblical Book of Deuteronomy, probably a few decades later, seem to have been modeled on them.¹³

050

It is also possible that the author(s) of the Joseph story knew about Esarhaddon’s rise to power through popular tales about the king that circulated long after his reign. The most prominent of these tales is the Aḥiqar story, about a sage and adviser to the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon.¹⁴ Known from an Aramaic papyrus from the island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt dating to the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., the tale is also attested in later versions in many other languages. A reference to Aḥiqar occurs, moreover, in the Book of Tobit (1:21–22). It has been repeatedly observed that Aḥiqar’s role as a royal counselor who is maligned and imprisoned but eventually saved mirrors Joseph’s role in Egypt. The Demotic Inaros Epic, known from papyri from the first or second century C.E., features Esarhaddon as well, focusing on the wars between Egypt and Assyria.¹⁵ In light of these various stories, it seems feasible that there was also a narrative tradition that touched on Esarhaddon’s relationship with his brothers.

The existence in Late Period Egypt of several tales about Esarhaddon is of particular interest if one considers that certain motifs in the Joseph story seem to have a genuinely Egyptian background. On one hand, 063 there is the issue of the unjustified rape accusations laid against Joseph by the wife of his employer Potiphar, which was mentioned earlier. A very similar motif is found in the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers, which is known from a 12th-century B.C.E. papyrus,¹⁶ where the wife of Anpu, after trying in vain to seduce her husband’s brother, Bata, accuses Bata of having sexually assaulted her.

An even closer parallel is found in the so-called Famine Stele, a Ptolemaic period (332–331 B.C.E.) inscription from the Nile island of Sehel not far from Aswan and Elephantine. The text describes how under King Djoser of the Third Dynasty (c. 2670 B.C.E.), a drought caused a seven-year famine in Egypt, how the sage Imhotep found out that the Nile flooding was controlled by the god Khnum of Elephantine, and how that god assured Djoser in a dream that he would make the Nile flow again, thus bringing the famine to an end. Joachim Quack of Heidelberg University has recently shown that references to seven years of plenty and seven years of want are also found in other Late Egyptian texts, which adds to the likelihood that the author(s) of the Joseph story borrowed this motif from an Egyptian source.¹⁷ Perhaps, the final version of the story originated within the Jewish diaspora community that thrived in Upper Egypt from the seventh century B.C.E. onward.¹⁸ Joseph would have been an excellent role model for this community.

We will probably never be able to determine with certainty how many versions of the Joseph story there were, who composed them and when. What we can say, however, with some confidence is that the author(s) of the tale drew central motifs from a variety of sources, some of Egyptian and others possibly of Mesopotamian origin. The story of the rise to power of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon may well have served as a particularly important model for the Biblical authors’ treatment of Joseph’s conflict with his brothers.

If so, Esarhaddon was not the only Mesopotamian ruler who left his mark on a central figure of the Hebrew Bible. The episode of Moses’s birth and upbringing may have been modeled on the birth legend of King Sargon of Akkad,^{b 19} and the story of Jonah on legends about the Assyrian queen Sammu-ramât–Semiramis,²⁰ who like the Biblical prophet had close ties with doves and fish. In all these cases, however, the Biblical authors thoroughly transformed their models.²¹ Stripping them of their royal prerogatives, they turned them into characters with complex psyches and unique qualities—characters who have deeply shaped the religious and literary imagination of East and West to this day.

Even though he was not the oldest of his brothers, Esarhaddon was named heir apparent of his father Sennacherib, ruler of the Assyrian empire. But because of his jealous brothers, Esarhaddon had to leave Nineveh and take refuge elsewhere. The pattern of jealous brothers, exile and eventual success is also seen in the Biblical story of Joseph. How does one tale inform the other?