Legend of Sargon of Akkade, c. 2300 BCE
Cuneiform texts have this to say of King Sargon, the founder of the Semitic dynasty of Akkad in 2360 B.C.- “I am Sargon, the powerful king, the king of Akkad. My mother was an Enitu priestess, I did not know any father…. My mother conceived me and bore me in secret. She put me in a little box made of reeds, sealing its lid with pitch. She put me in the river…. The river carried me away and brought me to Akki the drawer of water. Akki the drawer of water adopted me and brought me up as his son…”
The similarity with the Biblical story of Moses is in fact astounding- “And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch and put the child therein- and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink” (Ex. 2-3ff).
The basket-story is a very old Semitic folk-tale. It was handed down by word of mouth for many centuries. The Sargon legend of the third millennium B.C. is found on Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets of the first millennium B.C. It is nothing more than the frills with which posterity has always loved to adorn the lives of great men.
Werner Keller. The Bible as History. Bantam Books. New York. 1982. p.115.
See also-
Ancient History Sourcebook- The Legend of Sargon of Akkadê, c. 2300 BCE
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