Nimrod

The ancestor éponyme in the Bible

Wire of Koush, itself first-born of Cham, wire of Noah according to the Bible (Genesis X, 8-10).

According to the Bible, Nimrod was the founder and the king of the first empire come to the existence after the flood. It was distinguished in quality from powerful hunter " devant" the Eternal, which contains a pejorative nuance.

Indeed, the Hebrew word liphné , " with the face de" , can mean " contre" or " in opposition avec". Although, in this case, certain specialists lend to the Hebraic preposition the favorable direction, " opposite de" , the Targoum im Jews, as well as the Jewish Antiquities of the historian Flavius Josèphe, but as the context of chapter 10 of the Genèse itself imply as Nimrud was a powerful hunter which caused God.

Nimrod would have been also the founder of Ninive. It is it should be noted that it also belongs to the Arab and Persan legendary field.

According to the traditions Judeo-Christians, Nemrod, the " king-chasseur" reigning on the descendants of Noah, had the idea to build with Babel (Babylon) a rather high tower so that its top reaches the sky in any case as high as the Ararat mount (where Noah's Ark would have been failed), so that the floods cannot submerge of it the top in the event of new Déluge.
Nemrod died in a way of more humiliating. It is told indeed that a mosquito was introduced into its nose and caused atrocious migraines to him. He asked all the passers by to give him a slap on cranium in the hope to make fall the mosquito. Thus that which was caught for God died victim of weakest of the creatures.

History

According to the Bible, with its beginning, the kingdom of Nimrod included/understood the towns of Babel, Érek, Akkad and Kalné, all with the country of Shinéar. Consequently, it was probably under its direction that construction began from Babel and its tower.

This deduction is also in agreement with the traditional Jewish opinion. Josèphe wrote: “little by little the state of affairs transforms into a tyranny. It estimated that the only means of detaching the men of the fear of God, it was that they always relied on his own power. He promises to defend them against one second punishment of God who wants to flood the ground: he will build a rather high tower so that water cannot rise until it and he will avenge even death for their fathers. The people all were been willing to follow the opinions of, regarding obedience with God as a constraint; they are reflected to build the tower; it rose more quickly than one had supposed. ” - judaïques Antiquities , I, 114,115 (IV, 2,3).

Archaeologically speaking, the Tower of Babel was built at the 6th century before our era, more than 1000 years after the existence of Nimrod according to the Bible.

Being one of the most former kings of Assyrie, powerful hunter, inaugurator of the wars, it was also one of the first to gather the men in tribes and to build cities (Babylon and Ninive is most important).

Deification

According to Alexandre Hislop, Pasteur Protestant of the 19th century, after the death of Nimrod the Babylonians felt thorough to largely honor it as a founder, builder and a first king of their city, and as organizer of the initial Babylonian Empire. According to the tradition, Nimrod died of violent death. Since the god Mardouk (Merodak) was held for the founder of Babylon, Hislop put forth the assumption that Mardouk represents déifié Nimrod.

It is possible to see in Nemrod, a character included in Thousand and One Nights, mentioned in " History of Portefaix with the young people filles" , " History of Zobéida, the first adolescente". The latter, following some mishaps, fails in a city where the characters were changed into black stone statues. Only the son of the king, convert to the religion of Allah and his Prophet by his teacher, survived the punishment which struck the city. Indeed, its inhabitants were magi who venerated " terrible Nardoun" , king of the rebellious Giants with God, just like Nemrod.

In the Hell, Dante made of Nemrod one of the guards of Puit to the Giants, being at the bottom of the eighth circle of the hell. This puit is the passage towards the 9th circle and term of the hell. By seeing Dante and Virgile to approach, Nemrod shouts these mysterious words to them: " Raphél May amèche zabi almi" , words probably invented by Dante to retranscribe the mixture of the languages (Arab and Hebraic) in Babylon, Nimrod being that which caused the loss of the single language and the division of the men.

Nimrod is a major character of freemasonry. In its maconnic encyclopedia, Albert Mackey writes that Nimrod was one of the founders of the Franc-maçonnerie.

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