Sons of Seth and the South Wind

Abstract

The present paper will combine the data of archaeology, historical inscriptions and literary texts to cast light on the circumstances underwhich the figure Seth in Judaism emerged. There is a linguistic and historical continuity between the Amorite tribe Suteans and the biblical Seth (Šēṯ), son of Adam (Diakonoff 1982: 19). The name Seth originates from the ethnic term for Sutean nomads in Akkadian, alternatively called Shasu/Shosu in Egyptian. The term Sutean is analogous to the term ḫabiru/‘apiru, which was widely used in the secondmillennium Akkadian and Egyptian texts for splinter groups, and continued to be used in the Hebrew Bible, although in a modified meaning (see Na’aman 2005, 252–274). The present paper will argue that the ancient terms for the tribally organized Shasu or Sutean nomads survived in the accounts about Seth and his sons. The Akkadian word šūtu or sūtu denotes both the cardinal direction of the south and a pastoral tribe of southern origin. The Sutean tribes were exemplary enemies of Mesopotamian kings and gods, the southwind had a negative character, e.g. it was the antagonist of the sage in the Adapa myth. I will outline the idea that the account about Seth in Genesis polemically reverses the accounts in cuneiform literature about the Suteans. Both Adapa’s curse of the south wind and the accounts about destruction of Suteans are countered in Gen 4: 25, whereGod grants toAdamanother child Seth in place of Abel. Pieces of historical memory about the Sutean tribes can be found in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere in the Jewish literature in the stories about Adam’s son Seth and his progeny. It is probable that the Sutean pastoral tribes of Transjordanian origin indeed participated in the formation of the central hill country population during the early Iron Age (Rainey 2001). Secondarily, the accounts about “sons of Seth” became diversified within Jewish tradition itself, when different social groups started to identify themselves as such. There are instances in which “sons of Seth” are portrayed either in a positive or negative way.