by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Bible does not directly mention the Kassites. They were an ancient
Near Eastern people who conquered and ruled Babylonia from the 16th to 12th centuries BC. While the Kassites are not found in biblical texts, the term "Chaldeans" (Kashdim in Hebrew) is sometimes associated with them,
particularly in relation to the city of Ur. However, scholarly interpretations
differ on whether this connection is accurate”.
AI Overview
Introduction
One will have to search very hard throughout the Bible to find any mention of the Minoans and the Phoenicians, for instance – under those precise names, at least.
The complete lack of mention of the “Minoans” gets ‘explained’ something like this:
https://greekreporter.com/2025/03/18/what-was-the-origin-of-the-minoans-according-to-the-bible/
“Firstly, we need to establish how the Bible refers to the Minoans, as a different name is actually used for them. The name “Minoans” is a modern term invented by modern scholars, derived from the legend of King Minos, and no ancient source actually refers to them as such.
The Bible actually calls the Minoans the “Caphtorim.” How do we know? For one thing, “Caphtor” was the Hebrew word for Crete”.
That spells out one possible solution to the problem of missing nations.
A nation may appear in the Bible under some other, different name.
The Phoenicians, for their part (presuming that they have a part), pose such a problem that historian, Josephine Quinn, has claimed that there was, in fact, no such people.
On this (and the Minoans), see my article:
Of Cretans and Phoenicians
(6) Of Cretans and Phoenicians
Phoenicia was a later appellative for the Mediterranean coastal peoples, and hence the lonely mention of the Syro-Phoenician woman in the New Testament is geographical, rather than ethnic. Mark the Evangelist tells, in fact, that she was Greek (Mark 7:26): “The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia”.
The situation of the Romans and Rome came as a big shock to me.
I, having made a careful search, was unable to find throughout the Old Testament a single mention of this celebrated people, or, of their capital city. See e.g. my article:
Rome surprisingly minimal in [the] Bible
https://www.academia.edu/55241975/Rome_surprisingly_minimal_in_Bible
I began this article as follows:
Checking through my well-worn Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments (1969 reprint) - which, whilst it is a handy tool of reference, is far from being comprehensive - I cannot find one, single OT entry for either Roman, Romans, or Rome.
All references to these names are found in the New Testament: Acts; John; Romans; 2 Timothy.
Some commentators think that Balaam’s assertion that ‘ships will come from Chittim [Kittim]’ (Numbers 24:24) may be a long-range reference to the Romans.
That is to draw a very long bow, indeed! And it is almost certainly wrong.
In Daniel 11:29, “ships of Kittim” could, perhaps, be taken as a reference to the Romans inimical to the Greek Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’. However, according to the Jewish praises of “the Romans” at the time of Judas Maccabeus, “Kittim” was opposed to Rome (I Maccabees 8:5): “Philip, Perseus king of the Kittim, and others who had dared to make war on [the Romans], had been defeated and reduced to subjection …”.
The Romans do figure quite prominently in I and II Maccabees, in the Catholic Bible, which books would traditionally be considered as belonging to the Old Testament era.
However, I, in my Appendix to this article, and also in other articles, have advanced reasons why I consider the Maccabean wars to have occurred during the approximate time of - and beyond - the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
The Romans (Rome) is, as it seems to me, a subject in need of major clarification – perhaps requiring a huge overhaul of what we have traditionally been told.
But even certain famous people are missing their full persona, or lacking an appropriate archaeological representation.
Just to give one incredible example, to whet the reader’s appetite, regarding my revised King Herod, and who he was, and his relationship to Caesar, and who he was, read:
Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man
(6) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man
Neither King Herod, nor Augustus Caesar, was quite who we think he was.
Further regarding King Herod, I was stunned to find:
What, no statuary of Herod ‘the Great’?
(6) What, no statuary of Herod ‘the Great’?
This fact has led me to the conclusion that this King Herod, an attested biblical figure (e.g. Matthew 2:1), must also be someone (or some others) else.
This surprise situation (if I am correct) serves as a parallel with the lack of (or non-) mention of peoples (nations), and the almost total lack of evidence, in some cases, for certain great potentates, suggesting the need, in both instances, for alter ego/populi.
In some cases (e.g. the Phoenicians), it might indicate outright non-existence.
Now, leaving what we might call the Western world, let us turn our attention to the Ancient Near East, its peoples being the primary subject of interest for this article.
Kassites and Hittites
Just a quick note here firstly on Egypt.
One of its truly great pharaohs (amongst various others of these, I might add) has also managed to perform a magician’s vanishing act. See my article on this:
The Disappearing Piankhi
https://www.academia.edu/108993830/The_Disappearing_Piankhi
And, regarding the Medo-Persians, we find, sadly, that:
Medo-Persian history has no adequate archaeology
(3) Medo-Persian history has no adequate archaeology
As we are going to learn in the next section, though, the underlying problem may be geographical. If this be the case, then, hopefully, an adequate archaeology will come to the surface once one has begun to excavate for it in the right place.
Kassites
As we have read, there is no mention of this people at all, under this particular name, throughout the entire Bible.
But, even apart from the Bible, the poorly attested Kassites constitute a formidable problem for ancient historians.
This I observed starkly in my article:
Horrible Histories: Casualty Kassites
(2) Horrible Histories: Casualty Kassites
…. The Kassites are generally considered to have been an Indo-European people.
Thus Georges Roux wrote (in Ancient Iraq):
Hittites, Mitannians and the ruling class of the Kassites belonged to a very large ethno-linguistic group called ‘Indo-European’, and their migrations were but part of wider ethnic movements which affected Europe and India as well as Western Asia.
But is this, the standard view of the Kassites, really accurate?
It is not, I think, too much to say that the Kassites are an enigma for the over-extended conventional scheme.
But, nor do I think that revisionist scholars so far have properly accounted for them.
Georges Roux gave the standard estimate for the duration of Kassite rule of Babylonia: … “… a long line of Kassite monarchs was to govern Mesopotamia or, as they called it, Kar-Duniash for no less than four hundred and thirty-eight years (1595-1157 B.C.)”. This is a substantial period of time; yet archaeology has surprisingly little to show for it.
Roux again: ….
Unfortunately, we are not much better off as regards the period of Kassite domination in Iraq … all we have at present is about two hundred royal inscriptions – most of them short and of little historical value – sixty kudurru … and approximately 12,000 tablets (letters and economic texts), less than 10 per cent of which has been published. This is very little indeed for four hundred years – the length of time separating us from Elizabeth 1.
[Seton] Lloyd, in his book dedicated to the study of Mesopotamian archaeology, can offer only a mere 4 pages (including pictures) to the Kassites, without even bothering to list them in the book’s Index at the back. ….
Incredibly, though the names of the Kassites “reveal a clearly distinct language from the other inhabitants in the region”, as van de Mieroop writes, “and Babylonian texts indicate the existence of a Kassite vocabulary, no single text or sentence is known in the Kassite language”. ….
Obviously, new interpretations are required. ….
Indeed, they are.
One of the major obstacles militating against the proper identification, or situating, of peoples such as the Kassites, Hittites, Chaldeans and Elamites – and related peoples such as the Mitannians, Subarians, Urartians, Lullubi, Guti – is the shambles of a geography that has been presented to us by historians and geographers alike.
I had concluded the above article on this very note:
Obviously, new interpretations are required. ….
Perhaps a different and more appropriate geography is required for the Kassites along the lines of what Royce (Richard) Erickson has proposed for the Chaldeans and the Elamites:
A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY
(5) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY | Royce Erickson - Academia.edu
Royce Erickson has shifted the Chaldeans and the Elamites right out of the regions of southern Mesopotamian Iraq and Iran, and has transported them, holus bolus, to, respectively, NW Syria and Cilicia (Asia Minor).
And I fully support his revolutionary ‘tectonic’ shift.
He has correspondingly shunted the Medes and the Persians to Anatolia.
Obviously, if Royce Erickson is correct, then the historical interpretation of these nations, and of any others closely associated with them, will need to be vastly re-cast.
I am rather drawn to the suggestion above that the Kassites may be Chaldeans - but not the accompanying close association of them with the southern Mesopotamian Ur:
While the Kassites are not found in biblical texts, the term "Chaldeans" (Kashdim in Hebrew) is sometimes associated with them, particularly in relation to the city of Ur.
Indeed, I had hinted at such a connection in my postgraduate thesis (2007, Volume One, p. 178):
…. Though it is thought to have been the Greeks who had put the letter lambda (= l) in the name Chaldeans (χαλδαιοι), whom the Hebrews knew as Kasdim (כַּשְׂדִּים), I would favour this suggestion by Boutflower that the letter change was instead one quite natural to the Assyrian language:
The Chaldeans or Kasdim of the Hebrew Old Testament appear in the Assyrian cuneiform as the Kaldi. The original form of Kaldi was probably Kasdi, since according to a rule very common in the Assyrian language a sibilant before a dental is frequently changed into l.
Note that the Semitic root Kas- (Kash-) is common to both the name Kassites (known in Akkadian as kashshû) and the Kasdim (Chaldeans). The form Kaldu for the land of the Chaldeans is thought to have been first used by Ashurnasirpal II himself: “The fear of my sovereignty”, he boasted, “prevailed as far as the country of Karduniash; the might of my weapons overwhelmed the country of Kaldu”. This linguistic alteration, from kas- to kal-, has made it even less easy for historians to connect the Chaldeans with the Kassites, who, in Akkadian were known as kashshû. The Kassites were not actually native Chaldeans, though, but were ‘Indo-European’ rulers of the land known as Kasse (Babylonia), which they called Kar-Duniash. We recall Rib-Addi’s reference to “Kasse” in EA letter 76. ….
Kar-Duniash is, I believe, just a variant of Kar-kemish (Carchemish), which is my revised Babylon:
Correction for Babylon (Babel). Carchemish preferable to Byblos
(3) Correction for Babylon (Babel). Carchemish preferable to Byblos
An ‘Indo-European’ aspect is commonly associated with the likes of the Kassites, the Hittites and the Mitannians. But we find that, even the King of Urusalim (Jerusalem) at the time of the El Amarna (EA) letters, Jehoram of Judah, had, apparently, a Hurrian goddess (Hiba) element in his EA name, Abdi-Hiba.
Yet he certainly was not Indo-European, but Jewish.
Hittites
While the Hittites are mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament, one needs carefully to distinguish between the biblical Hittites, descendants of Canaan (Genesis 10:15), who dwelt in the Promised Land, and the so-called ‘Indo-European’ imperial Hittites of the text books.
Regarding the latter, Johannes Lehmann tells (in The Hittites: people of a thousand gods, 1977) that: “Meyers Neues Konversationslexikon (1871) summarized all that was known about the Hittites in a scant seven lines”.
Abraham bought the Cave of Machpelah from the Hittites (Genesis 23).
And Esau married two Hittite women (Genesis 26:34-35).
There is an isolated mention of “the Hittites” (הַחִתִּ֛ים) ha-ḥit-tîm as, seemingly, a military power in 2 Kings 7:6: “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!”
So, the matter is a complicated one.
A ray of light may have shone through, however, in my revised context, owing to the apparent identification, in the Assyrian records, of a Kassite king as a Hittite.
On this, see my recent article:
Merging a Kassite and a Hittite King
(3) Merging a Kassite and a Hittite king
Who Tukuti-Ninurta, so-called I, called a Kassite, ruling in Babylon, the Assyrian king’s alter ego, Sargon II (Sennacherib) called that same king a Hittite, ruling in Carchemish.
My conclusion would be, therefore, that the Kassites and the Hittites were interchangeable.
And, if the Kassites were likewise the Chaldeans, as proposed above, then that would tie up all together:
KASSITES = CHALDEANS = HITTITES
Complicating matters, Brock Heathcotte has argued most convincingly for the Hittite king, Mursilis, to have been the same as the Cimmerian king, Tugdamme:
A supposed ‘Hittite’ ruler newly identified
(3) A supposed 'Hittite' ruler newly identified
Running with our new-found ‘revelations’ (a) that the Hittites were the Kassites/ Chaldeans, now re-located by Royce Erickson to NW Syria (where we do find the Hittites), and (b) that, with the Elamites now re-located by Erickson to Cilicia where lay the hub of the Hittite empire, Hattusa (Boğazköy), then the Hittites need also to undergo a geographical overhaul.
Boğazköy would now be, instead, the Elamite capital of Susa - the Hittites requiring to be lifted right out of Cilicia.
An attractive candidate for the Hittite capital, Hattusa, would be Kadesh (Hattush?) on the Orontes, over which the Hittites and Egyptians fought fierce battles.
Note that this Kadesh is very close, indeed, to where Richard (Royce) Erickson has re-located the Chaldean capital city of Dur Yakin (his Figure 5).
