Esarhaddon’s dreadful illness was Nebuchednezzar’s very alienation

by Damien F. Mackey “Depressions and fear of impending death were a constant in [Esarhaddon’s] life. In addition, his physical appearance was affected by the marks of a permanent skin rash that covered large parts of his body and especially his face. In one letter, the king’s personal physician - certainly a medical professional at the very top of his league - was forced to confess his ultimate inability to help the king: “My lord, the king, keeps telling me: ‘Why do you not identify the nature of my disease and find a cure?’ As 1 told the king already in person, his symptoms cannot be classified”.” Karen Radner King Nebuchednezzar's unique and terrible illness, a result of the king’s hubris, is recounted in Daniel 4. For example, we read in vv. 28-37: All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, ‘Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?’ Even as the words were on his lips, a voice came from heaven, ‘This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes’. Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird. At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’ At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble. …. On the 8th October, 2020, I was reading about the polymath, Avicenna, and how he cured an eastern prince who thought that he was a cow (Nebuchednezzar’s “the ox”. For more on Avicenna, see my article: Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism (3) Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Oxen can also be female cattle). Here is one version of that strange story: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970379/ Avicenna often used psychological methods to treat his patients. One anecdote was when a malnourished prince of Persia had melancholia, refused to eat and suffered from the delusion that he was a cow. The prince would moo like a cow crying, “Kill me so that a good stew may be made of my flesh” and would not eat anything. Ibn Sina [Avicenna] was persuaded to the case and sent a message to the patient, asking him to be happy as the butcher was coming to slaughter him, and the sick man rejoiced. When Ibn Sina approached the prince with a knife in his hand, he asked “where is the cow so I may kill it.” The patient then mooed like a cow to indicate where he was. By order of the butcher, the patient was also laid on the ground for slaughter. When Ibn Sina approached the patient pretending to slaughter him, he said, “The cow is too lean and not ready to be killed. It must be fed properly and I will kill it when it becomes healthy and fat.” The patient was then offered food which he ate eagerly and gradually “gained strength, got rid of his delusion, and was completely cured.” …. [End of quotes] Anyway, that made me think of King Nebuchednezzar. {I shall be having much more to say in the future, Deo volente, on what I consider to be the real historical origins of the one called “Avicenna”} Nebuchednezzar has various historical manifestations, as I have argued in my biblico-historical reconstruction: De-coding Jonah (3) De-coding Jonah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu But each one of these manifestations, or alter egos: Ashurnasirpal; Esarhaddon; Ashurbanipal; Nabonidus; Cambyses; suffered a terrible illness, or quasi-madness. The most graphic account, I find, is the one for Esarhaddon that I quoted in the article “De-coding Jonah”, and, before that, in: Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar (3) Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu There we read: As we know from the correspondence left by the roya1 physicians and exorcists … [Esarhaddon’s] days were governed by spells of fever and dizziness, violent fits of vomiting, diarrhoea and painful earaches. Depressions and fear of impending death were a constant in his life. In addition, his physical appearance was affected by the marks of a permanent skin rash that covered large parts of his body and especially his face. In one letter, the king's personal physician - certainly a medical professional at the very top of his league - was forced to confess his ultimate inability to help the king: “My lord, the king, keeps telling me: ‘Why do you not identify the nature of my disease and find a cure?'’ As 1 told the king already in person, his symptoms cannot be classified”. While Esarhaddon’s experts pronounced themselves incapable of identifying the king's illness, modern day specialists have tried to use the reported symptoms in order to come up with a diagnosis in retrospect?' However, it is not entirely clear whether the sickly Esarhaddon contracted one illness after the other or, as would seem more likely, suffered from the afflictions of a chronic disease that never left for good. Be that as it may, in a society that saw illness as a divine punishment, a king who was constantly confined to the sick bay could not expect to meet with sympathy and understanding. He could, however, reasonably presume that his subjects saw his affliction at the very least as an indication that the gods lacked goodwill towards their ruler, if not as the fruit of divine wrath, incurred by committing some heinous crime. Therefore, the king's condition needed to be hidden from the public by all means, and that this was at all feasible was very much facilitated by the ancient tradition that whoever came before the king had to be veiled and on their knee. Because of his failing health, Esarhaddon saw himself permanently in death’s clutches; this alone made it necessary to provide for his succession: Who would be king after him? There were a great many possible candidates: Esarhaddon himself had fathered at least 18 children but, some of them suffered, like their father, from a frail condition and needed permanent medical attention". It would appear that sickly sons were, just like all the daughters, deemed unfit from the start: After all, only a man without fault could be king of Assyria. …. [End of quote] Richard B. Sorensen gives an account of the horrible illness that apparently plagued Charles Darwin throughout his life, and this, again, made me think of Nebuchednezzar: The Darwinian Emperor is Naked https://www.academia.edu/42232462/The_Darwinian_Emperor_is_Naked …. Incidentally, Darwin himself was in distress for most of his life. As he states in his autobiography, he was apparently quite sadistic as a child, and later developed severe physical and psychological problems: “In the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting, and I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued and I became a very good shot” (1958, p. 44). …. Darwin stated that his health problems began as early as 1825 when he was only sixteen years old and became incapacitating around age 28. He was an invalid from the age of 30. Dozens of scholarly articles and at least three books have been written on the question of Darwin’s illness. The current conclusion is that Darwin suffered from several serious and incapacitating psychiatric disorders, including agoraphobia. It is characterized by fear of panic attacks (or actual panic attacks) when not in a psychologically safe environment, such as at home. Darwin, as is common among agoraphobiacs, also developed many additional phobias — being in crowds, being alone, or leaving home unless accompanied by his wife. Colp (1977, p. 97) concluded that “much of Darwin’s daily life was lived on a rack which consisted of fluctuating degrees of pain” that was sometimes so severe that Darwin called it “distressingly great.” Darwin’s many psychological or psychologically-influenced physical health symptoms included severe depression, insomnia, hysterical crying, dying sensations, shaking, fainting spells, muscle twitches, shortness of breath, trembling, nausea, vomiting, severe anxiety, depersonalization, and seeing visual hallucinations (Barloon and Noyes, 1997, p. 139; Picover, 1998, p. 290; Colp, 1977, p. 97; Bean, 1978, p. 573). The physical symptoms included headaches, cardiac palpitations, ringing in ears (possibly tinnitus), painful flatulence, and gastric upsets—all of which commonly have a psychological origin (Pasnau, 1990). Diagnosis of the cause of Darwin’s mental and physical disorders include parasitic disease (Chaga’s disease—caused by an insect common in South America), arsenic poisoning, and possibly even an inner ear disorder (Picover, 1998, p. 290; Pasnau, 1990). However, all of these causes have largely been refuted. Colp noted that “behind these symptoms there was always a core of anxiety and depression” (1977, p. 97). Some speculate that part of Darwin’s mental problems were due to his nagging, gnawing fear that he had “devoted his life to a fantasy”—and a “dangerous one” at that (Desmond and Moore, 1991, p. 477). This fear was that his theory was false and there was, in fact, a divine Creator. Others, including Darwin’s own wife, argued that his mental problem stemmed from guilt over his life’s goal to refute the argument for God from design (Bean, 1978, p. 574; p. 28; Pasnau, 1990, p. 126). Most of the psychoanalytic studies have argued that his problems were a result of his repressed anger toward his tyrannical father and “the slaying of his heavenly father” by his theory (Pasnau, 1990, p. 122). …. In addition to all of his health problems, Darwin was concerned about the tenuousness of his own theory, and provided a criterion which, if true, would demonstrate that it was a sham: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” …. [End of quotes] Charles Darwin did not ever, presumably, eat grass like an ox, or grow feathers and claws, but he did propose that humans - rational human animals (Aristotle’s “Man is a rational animal”) -shared a common ancestry with irrational brute beasts. What G. K. Chesterton would contrast as Homo Sapiens and Simius Insipiens. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/aquinas.ix.html …. It is a pity that the word Anthropology has been degraded to the study of Anthropoids. It is now incurably associated with squabbles between prehistoric professors (in more senses than one) about whether a chip of stone is the tooth of a man or an ape; sometimes settled as in that famous case, when it was found to be the tooth of a pig. It is very right that there should be a purely physical science of such things; but the name commonly used might well, by analogy, have been dedicated to things not only wider and deeper, but rather more relevant. Just as, in America, the new Humanists have pointed out to the old Humanitarians that their humanitarianism has been largely concentrated on things that are not specially human, such as physical conditions, appetites, economic needs, environment and so on -- so in practice those who are called Anthropologists have to narrow their minds to the materialistic things that are not notably anthropic. They have to hunt through history and pre-history something which emphatically is not Homo Sapiens, but is always in fact regarded as Simius Insipiens. Homo Sapiens can only be considered in relation to Sapientia ….