The last Ten Tribes study revealed from God’s Word in Hosea, our Father’s intent to scatter the ‘house of Israel’, causing them to forget their heritage as part of God’s People, taking on new names and customs and “…hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.” (Hosea 2:6). This ‘wall’ or hedged up way was to bring about the moving of the ten tribes to the lands our Father intended. It was done in similar manner that Rehoboam’s heart was hardened towards the ten tribes after his father Solomon’s death, to cause God’s prophecy of the split of both ‘houses’ to come true (I Kings 12). The ten tribes had ‘forgotten’ their knowledge as God’s People, similar to the forty years in the wilderness of being led by Jehovah out of Egypt through Moses until the time when they were to come to the promised land. Through generations this migration of the ten tribes came about. It didn’t happen all at once. And it happened in stages, just as their captivity to Assyria was in stages (II Kings).
     My plan with this particular study is not to document totally this migration through historical means. I only propose to call attention to a previously missing archaeological link to the lost ten tribe’s migrations. In this, others will have reference to some valuable information and resources for their further study on the ten tribes of Israel, i.e. the ‘house of Israel’.
     And we ask our Father to give us a Word of Wisdom in this study, in Christ’s Precious Name, Amen.

The Ten Tribes Scattered Further

     Hosea the prophet revealed a summary of God’s intent to scatter the ten tribes of Israel in all countries. Just to make sure that was no fairy tale from God’s Word, and that we will know ‘who’ was to be scattered, let’s cover a little from the Book of Ezekiel:

Ezek 1:3    The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

     Ezekiel the prophet was in captivity to Babylon at this verse. This Chebar of Ezek.1:3 was in Babylon at his captivity home.

Ezek 3:4   And He said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with My words unto them.
5    For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel;

     God sent Ezekiel to give a Message to both ‘houses’. Here He is telling Ezekiel specifically to “…get thee unto the house of Israel”. If you’ll remember from the past studies, the ‘house of Israel’, i.e. the ten lost tribes, were taken captive by the Assyrian to Halah, Habor by the river Gozan, and to the cities of the Medes (II Kings 17 & 18). These areas of Assyria, were to the north of Babylon (modern day Iraq) where the ‘house of Judah’ went captive later. The house of Judah’s captivity to Babylon came 130 years after Israel’s, so the ten tribes were captive in ‘the land of the Chaldeans’ first. They were just a little farther north than Judah.

Ezek 3:15   Then I came to them of the captivity at Telabib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days.
16    And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
17    “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me.”

     This ‘Chebar‘ here in verse 15 is not the same place where Ezekiel lived in Babylon. This area is where God sent him to give prophesy to the ‘house of Israel’, as evidenced by these verses. That means to Assyria where the ten tribes were. This is very important, because many think Ezekiel was talking to his Jewish brethren in Babylon only, and not to the ‘house of Israel’ or ten tribes. This Chebar in Ezek.3:15 is modern Khabour, a tributary of the Euphrates, forty-five miles from Babylon.¹
     Ezekiel is then brought to those of the ‘house of Israel’, and is told by God to make a drawing on a tile of Jerusalem, showing what God would do to it. And this Message was all to the ‘house of Israel’ even though Judah is mentioned along with it (Ezek.4 – 6). Part of God’s Message in Ezekiel to the ‘house of Israel’, or the ten tribes, reveals they were to be further scattered after their Assyrian captivity:

Ezek 6:8   Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries.
9    And they that escape of you shall remember Me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from Me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
10   And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.
11    Thus saith the Lord GOD; “Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, ‘Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel! for they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.

     We know the ‘house of Israel’ was still being held captive in Assyria during Ezekiel’s time of Babylon captivity. Even those of the ‘house of Judah’ had not returned to Jerusalem at this point, and were still in Babylon. And yet, God through Ezekiel is telling the ten tribes that there would be a ‘remnant’ which will escape the sword of captivity, when they are scattered through the countries (Ezek.6:8). That means the ‘house of Israel’ or ten tribes were to be further ‘scattered’ from Assyria, not back to the Holy Land, but ‘through the countries’.

E. Raymond Capt and Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets

     Biblical historian, archaeologist, and educator E. Raymond Capt has provided us a very important archaeological link for the lost ten tribes of Israel in his excellent work Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. He has joined many ‘links’ together about the ‘house of Israel’ from hard work done by researchers, historians, and archaeologists of the past. In my opinion, the conclusions Capt arrives at from his research and of others, concerning the Behistun and Assyrian Tablet artifacts, is possibly the single most important work on the ‘Ten Lost Tribes of Israel’, from the scientific aspect. There is ‘hard’ evidence in stone, not just from The Bible standpoint. Our Father has ensured His People would find His Truth, even to our day and time.

The “Jehu Stele” or “Black Obelisk”

     Sir Austin Henry Layard of England, found a stele in Kurkh on the Tigris river in A.D. 1846, which depicts Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, in triumph over Syria and portions of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (II Kings 17 & 18). It shows one of Western Semitic dress bowing on all fours to Shalmaneser. The text inscription above the scene states:

The tribute of Jehu (Iaua) son of Khumri (Omri): I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king, purukhti fruits.²

     This ‘Jehu’ was the son of Jehoshaphat and one of the anointed kings over the ‘house of Israel’ (1 Kings 19:16). The word ‘Khumri’ in the “Jehu Stele” is the Assyria name for Omri. Thus the Assyrians called the kings of the ‘house of Israel’ at that time ‘son of Omri’. This ‘Omri’ was a captain of Northern Kingdom Israel (ten tribes) which the people appointed their king (1 Kings 16:16).
     Therefore, the word Khumri, which refers to Omri king of northern Israel, is the first name used by Assyria for the ten tribes, or ‘house of Israel’. More evidence coming up…

The Assyrian Tablets

     English archaeologist Sir Austin Henry Layard also discovered, later at Kiyunjik in 1847, stores of clay tablets with Assyrian cuneiform writing along with Sennacherib’s palace, and the ancient capitol city of Nineveh. An Assyrian text translated from 1,471 of these 23,000 clay tablets discovered by Sir Austin Henry Layard, was published by R.F. Harper, and an English translation made available in 1930 by Leroy Waterman at the University of Michigan.³
     These tablets cover a period of Assyrian history at the time of the captivity to Assyria of the ‘house of Israel’, i.e. ten tribes.
     The Assyrian name of Khumri for the ‘sons of Omri’ taken from the Jehu Stele mentioned above, was a pre-captivity name for the Israelites. These Assyrian Tablets further link the later Assyrian names for the ‘house of Israel’. According to translations from these Assyrian Tablets, Khumri became changed to ‘Gamir’ and ‘Gamera’, during the house of Israel’s captivity in Assyria. The Assyrian name “ga-me-ra-a-a” is translated to ‘Cimmerian’ by Prof. Leroy Waterman in Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire, published by the University of Michigan in 1930.⁴ Thus, the word Cimmerian became one of the identifiers for those of the ‘house of Israel’.
     The Assyrian tablet gives proof for this Cimmerian marker in “Letter 112 – Arad-Sin to the Overseer of the Palace”, by connecting the Cimmerians with those of Gamir and Gamera.⁵  These Assyrian Tablets have provided a strong archaeological missing link to the ‘ten tribes of Israel’ which have been searched for many years. As several ancient histories, such as by Herodotus, Strabo, etc., mention the Cimmerians, their origins have been hard to determine without any archaeological foundation. The discovery of the Assyrian Tablets and their translation bridges the missing link in the gap.
     The Greek geographer Strabo states this about the Cimmerians:

Those Cimmerians whom they also call Trerans, or some tribe of the Cimmerians, often overran the countries on the right of the Pontu (south of the Black Sea) and those adjacent to them, at one time have invaded Paphlagnia, and at another time Phrygia even, at which time Midas drank bull’s blood, they say, and thus went down to his doom. ⁶

  Strabo also goes further about where these Cimmerians migrated:

Lygdamis (Tugdamme in Assyrian records) king of the Cimmerians, at the head of his own soldiers, marched as far as Lydia and Ionia, and captured Sardis (capitol of Lydia) but lost his life in Cilicia.⁷

     Interestingly enough, these areas where Strabo said these Cimmerians migrated to, are all regions where Paul and the Apostles went to preach The Gospel of Christ. Paul himself was from Tarsus, in Cilicia (Acts 9:11; 22:3). And Christ told the Apostles in Matthew 10:5: “…Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of Samaritans enter ye not: 6:But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Paul’s commission in Acts 9:15 was to preach Christ to the Gentile, kings, and children of Israel. With Christ’s command to go to the lost sheep, these nation links and migrations of the Cimmerians should become apparent. The seven Churches of Revelation were also in these areas of Asia Minor where Strabo says the Cimmerians migrated to.
     This link Strabo and other ancient and modern histories cited by Capt in Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets, joins many peoples of seemingly separate tribal names into the majority of one peoples, which went north, and west, northwest and southwest, from Assyria.
     Another branch of the Israelites which can be traced to the Scythians are the ‘Iskuza’, mentioned also in the Assyrian Tablets. As the term ‘house of Isaac’ is used to refer to the ‘house of Israel’ in Amos 7:16, this word ‘Iskuza’ was a natural Assyrian corruption of ‘Isaac’. This label further grew into the labels of ‘Shuthae’ by the Greeks and the word ‘Sacae’ by the Persians, which refer to the Scythians.⁸
     By these two groups, one called Cimmerians, which migrated west to Asia Minor and Western Europe from Assyria first, and the second group of Scythians who later migrated west to take over many of the Cimmerians’ lands, the ancestry of the peoples of Europe and Asia Minor can be traced to modern times. These would later form the Celts (Cimmerians), the Gauls, Normans, Norsk or Norse, Goths, and Germani peoples. A migration to ancient Britain by the Angles and Saxons (Isaac’s sons), would also form the several Welsh, English, Scots, and Irish peoples. These various peoples, of seemingly different ancestry, have mixed to make up the founding ancestral nations of today’s Europe. And those peoples who formed Europe all have one major trait in common. Though they had different names, and languages, they made up the Caucasian race which settled in Europe, having migrated from Assyria of Israelite origins. As can be discovered by Britain’s history especially, the various conquests of Britain by supposedly different nations of heritage, such as the Anglo-Saxons from Germany, the Danish and Norse, and then lastly the Normans of France, it should have been made up of many different races. All these various peoples which invaded Britain were of one common stock, either descendents of the Cimmerians, or of the Scythians. And they all have a heritage as being part of the ‘house of Israel’.

The Behistun Rock

On an old caravan road from Babylon to Ecbatana, the ancient capitol of Median, there is a carving on a mountain side made by Darius the Mede dated at 515 B.C. An English officer named Henry C. Rawlinson deciphered the cuneiform inscriptions on this carved mountain side, called the Behistun Rock. The inscriptions on the Behistun Rock were in three languages, Babylonian (Accadian), Elamite (Susian), and Persian.⁹

There are 20 panels of carvings. In the center is a depiction of King Darius with his foot over one captive chief, and 9 other captives all bound together.

Each captive chief is dressed differently, some with short tunics, others with long robes, and still others with the characteristic Hebrew cap.

Each paragraph of each inscription panel begins with the following: “I am Darius, the king of kings, the king of Persia.” And the 10th panel mentions “Sarocus“, the Sacan, one in Hebrew attire.¹⁰

     The word Armenia is mentioned also, as this was the area where these captives were taken and placed by the Assyrians. The word Sakkas is named in these inscriptions also. In the Elamite and Persian language inscriptions, the word Sakka is used to name some of these ‘chieftans’ in captivity to Assyria, but in the Babylonian inscription version, the word employed is Gimiri (verified for the British Museum by L.W. King and R.C. Thomson – Sculptures and Inscriptions of Behistun, pg.161).¹¹ That word Gimiri links back to what the Assyrians called the sons of Omri of the ‘house of Israel’, that is Khumri, and Cimri, or Cimmerian.

The Greek historian Herodotus gives an account of the Scyths (Sythians) in pursuit of the Cimmerians following a small passage known as the Dariel Pass, through the Caucasus Mountains northeast of the Black Sea.

     Herodotus states:

Scythia still retains traces of the Cimmerians; there are Cimmerian castles, and a Cimmerian ferry, also a tract called Cimmeria, and a Cimmerian Bosphorus. It appears likewise that the Cimmerians, when they fled into Asia (Asia Minor) to escape the Scyths, made a settlement in the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope was afterwards built. The Scyths, it is plain, pursued them, and missing their road, poured into Media. For the Cimmerians kept the line which led along the sea-shore, but the Scyths in their pursuit held the Caucasus upon their right, thus proceeding inland, and falling upon Media. This account is one which is common both to Greeks and barbarians.¹²

     The name of Caucasian was derived from those peoples who once held and migrated through the Caucasus Mountains, east of the Black Sea. These would then further migrate west to the isles in Europe. II Esdras 13 in the Apocrypha is possibly another reference to this Passage in the Caucasus by the Cimmerians and Scythians.
     The Scythian migrations also went further east, to the Orient. These ‘Sok-wang’, meaning ‘Sakka princes’, fled to a valley of the upper Indus with Kashmir and Afghanistan as borders.¹³

     The historic traces of the Sacae, the Scythians, and the Cimmerians, have been written of by many historians, both ancient and modern. The evidence for their later migrations to Europe is plentiful. The only ‘link’ missing was that of the lost ten tribe’s captivity while in Assyria, and just how their identity as Israel was lost. Truly as our Heavenly Father said through Hosea:

Hosea 2:13    And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat Me, saith the LORD.

     He would hedge up their paths so they could not be found, and visit upon them the full Baalim of pagan idolatry which caused their falling away. And the very Baalism which the ‘house of Israel’ coveted became the system which gave them new names (khumri), losing their original heritage as God’s People ‘Ammi’. They became ‘Lo-Ammi’, not God’s People.

Hosea 2:14    Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
15    And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

     Then when it was time, they would be lured through the ‘wilderness’ and scattered through the countries, until… they came to new lands, and new vineyards, and Israel began to remember GOD through His Son Jesus Christ.

Hosea 2:16  And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call Me Ishi; and shalt call Me no more Baali.
17    For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.
18    And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.

     And when they finally migrated to their new lands, and Christ our New Covenant was offered, GOD took away their ‘names of Baalim’ out of their mouths which Assyria gave them, becoming again ‘Ammi’, God’s People.
     Yet, paganism and worship of false gods, which are no gods, is still with His People of the ‘house of Israel’. Once again God’s People of the ‘house of Israel’ are becoming lost and again ‘Lo-Ammi’ (not My People). And another cycle of the same false Babylon World Order system is taking God’s People into another captivity. This time that bondage is not of geographical paths to Babylon and Assyria, but enslavement of our hearts and minds away from GOD and Christ, a spiritual captivity. Only through deception can one go into captivity again today. Understanding The Knowledge of Christ is the only Way to prevent that slavery of deception upon us today. Our founding fathers of the Western Christian Nations suffered that captivity and battled for our freedoms we have been so accustomed to. Let us not go into bondage again, for we are ‘Ammi’, His People, GOD’s People. And ‘Ammi’ includes all believers on Christ Jesus, a spiritual and a physical Israel.

Blessings to you in Christ Jesus,
Dave Ramey.

Footnotes:

¹ The Companion Bible, (Kregel Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI., 1990), margin note, p.1109.

² Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. E. Raymond Capt, M.A., A.I.A., F.S.A. Scot. (Artisan Sales, Muskogee, OK, 1985), p. 97-99.

³ Ibid., pp. 100-101.
⁴ Ibid., pp. 122-123.
⁵ Ibid., p. 115.
⁶ Ibid., p. 125.
⁷ Ibid., pp. 135-126.
⁸ Ibid., pp. 120-123.
⁹ Ibid., p. 137.
¹⁰ Ibid., p. 139.
¹¹ Ibid., pp. 139-140.

¹² The Histories of Herodotus, Book IV.12. Translated by George Rawlinson, (Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997), p.308.

¹³ Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets. E. Raymond Capt, M.A., A.I.A., F.S.A. Scot. (Artisan Sales, Muskogee, OK, 1985), p. 157.

Original source of all Behistun images from either Wonders of The Past, Vol.2 (1937), J.A. Hammerton, Wise & Compton; or History of The World. Vol.I (1909), J.C. Ridpath (Jones Brothers Publishing), as presented through Art Today.