And then there was Sargon of Akkad....

[Jillyn'Toast]

There are several stories of historical kings or rulers who went from poverty to greatness in which they were sent down a river in a basket by their lowly, peasant mother only to be picked up and raised by someone of status. Obviously, Moses was one of these stories. I can see obviously that there can't be that many people who came to such greatness and had the exact same story (it seems a bit fishy, in that sense, to me), so it must be some sort of myth that symbolizes coming from nothing to something. I was just curious if anyone had insight on this, had heard of this, or simply had any comments on the topic. I am most interested in the relevance this has for interpretation of Scripture. I don't think it means that any of these people were fictional, but rather that their life story may be represented symbolically. Also, does it matter which came first of these stories? Any thoughts?

[JB]

Grabbing my copy of Ancient Near Eastern Texts from the shelf, here's the chiefly relevant account of Sargon:

Sargon, the mighty king, king of Agade, am I.
My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not.
The brother(s) of my father loved the hills.
My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates.
My mother, the high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. [literally, "door"]
She cast me into the river which rose not (over) me.
The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water.
Akki, the drawer of water lifted me out as he dipped his e[w]er.
Akki, the drawer of water, [took me] as his son (and) reared me.
Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener.

The text in question was, I think, dated to the seventh century BC (but that's controversial), though Sargon himself lived long before Moses on any account.

And, of course, the tale of Moses:

And a man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank. And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. And her maidens walked along the riverside; and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children."

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?" And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So the maiden went and called the child's mother. Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses, saying, "Because I drew him out of the water."

I'm not familiar, off the top of my head, with any other narratives of sufficient similarity for any other figures in the ANE, though I know there are some out there that are also pretty close.

There are some pretty obvious similarities in the accounts. The mother--who in both tales happens to have a connection with the society's priesthood (Sargon's mother being a "high priestess"; Moses' mother being also the mother of Aaron, who was to become high priest)--places the child in a basket, coats it, and puts it in a river. Someone else finds the basket and adopts the son. There are also differences. Sargon's story explicitly mentions that the basket floated down the river to Akki, whereas the biblical narrative never actually mentions Moses' basket moving; it's just "in the reeds" when the mother puts him in and when Pharaoh's daughter shows up. Furthermore, the parental intent seems wildly different. The biblical narrative includes a greater deal of historical detail for the background, though that's to be expected. The similarities seem more prominent than the differences, at least to me. I know that JPH did a great treatment (http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/sargon.html) of the issue, in which he mentioned some issues involved in the dating of the Sargon story itself, as well as dealing with the similarities. Nothing in the texts themselves seems terribly implausible for the historical setting of either, so far as I know, which weakens the case for borrowing. It could still be an archetypal motif of sorts, but even that seems based in known practice, and the story of Moses at least purports to be historical, and as there doesn't seem to be a powerful reason to regard it otherwise on the basis of the Sargon story, the force of any case that argues against the historicity of the Mosaic account because of this seems awfully dulled. And at any rate, if one takes an early date for the dating of Exodus and a later date for the dating of the Sargon account, the case for borrowing would have to work in the other direction, though it still seems improbable.

[GKC_fan]

And even assuming for the sake of argument that there was borrowing, that doesn't in and of itself weaken the trustworthiness of any particular account. I.e, if you were a child's mother in those cultures, and you were absolutely desperate to keep your child out of someone's clutches, to the point of adopting him/her out, then 1) the stories we have a totally believable and plausible, 2) given similar cultures along a river like the Nile or Euphrates their is perfectly good reason to think that this natural solution would have occurred to multiple people in these separate cultures, and 3) the existence and knowledge of other real or mythical people who had used this particular method is actually evidence in favor of Moses's mother doing it too. She would not have said "Oh rats! I can't put Moses in a basket like [insert name here], because that would be copyright infringement. Oh well, I'll just have to let him die, then. Pity, but it can't be helped."

GKC_fan