WAS NIMROD A REAL PERSONAGE?

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1211, 17 May 1895, Page 10

WAS NIMROD A REAL PERSONAGE?

Everything comes to him who waits, and if Professor Sayce be well justified in what he has written from Assouan, in Egypt, historical justice is about .to be I done to everybody’s old friend Nimrod (remarks the London JJciily Taleyvciph). Hitherto it has always been doubtful whether this ancient sportsman was oi was not a veritable personage ; but. the learned Professor is now of opinion, that he has found the . name of the Mighty ITunter surely and safely registered in the cuneiform inscriptions. If it be as stated, the full name of Nimrod was Nazi Murud.athe Ivassu, and he lived in Babylon about fifty years before the date of the exodus, a contemporary of the father of that Assyrian king who restored Nineveh and founded Calali. Nazi Muruda is near enough to “ Nimrod " to have been quite possibly the true appellation of this famous personage when he was, to use an American phrase, “tu hum." Arabic scholars can never have failed to notice the similarity between the Mighty Hunter’s title and the word “ Nimr," which means a tiger. Any further particulars from the same erudite quarter will, of course, be. welcome to us in the West, particularly when a nevv club has lately been staited in London bearing Nimrod’s name. At the same time, we are bound by faithful scholarship to point out that, like many another sporting man, the intimate character of Nimrod may not be able to bear too fierce a light. . The particulars which are given of him in the Koran are of a perfectly distressing kind.. In chapter ii., entitled “ The Cow," Nimrod is represented as disputing with Abraham , . and to show himself equal to the Al- j mighty in power as to life and death he has two innocent men brought before him, one of whom the hunter dispatches, while the other he saves alive. In Sura XVI. of the Koran, entitled £l The Bee," allusion is made to the tower which Nimrod built in Babel and carried to the height of five thousand cubits, intending to ascend to Heaven and wage war with the angels, but Allah frustrated his attempt, overthrowing the presumptuous structuie by an earthquake. In Sura XXI., entitled The Prophets," another legend, is told reflecting very badly upon Nimrod s private life. He is said to have filled a vast space full of wood at Cutha, and after setting it on fire to have cast Abraham upon it, bound hand and foot, but the angel Gabriel came to the assistance of the friend of God, so that nothing about him was burned except the cords. It is added that the fierce flames became an odoriferous air and the burning faggots a pleasant meadow; though for other people it was so hot that 2000 unbelievers were consumed. From the same source we gather that Nimrod in his last days was destroyed by a special messenger from the Almighty in the shape of a gnat, which penetrated to his brain and caused his death with intolerable pain—a Heaven," as D’Herbelot remarks, “ desiring to punish by one of the smallest of its creatures the tyrant who had called himself Lord of all." We grieve to recall these legendary particulars at a moment when history appears inclined to furnish us with unexpected revelations, as regards this prototype cf the sporting world. Most sportsmen are sportsmanlike, and we must not too readily believe, at least until Professor Sayce has concluded his researches, that the earliest M.F.H. in the world and keenest pursuer of ’big game could lightly do anything derogatory to the conduct of a* true lover of the chase.