One of the most curious theories about Nimrod, suggested in modern times, was grounded on the “Book of Nabatean Agriculture.” This work is a comparatively modern forgery, pretending to be a literary production of the early Chaldean period. In this work Nimrod heads a list of Babylonian kings called _Canaanite_, and a writer in the “Journal of Sacred Literature” has argued with considerable force in favour of these Canaanites being the Arabs of Berosus, who reigned about B.C. 1550 to 1300. The southern half of Arabia is known as Cush in the Old Testament like the opposite coast of Africa, and, as Nimrod is called a Cushite in Genesis, there was a great temptation to identify him with the leader of the Arab dynasty. This idea, however, gained little favour, and has not been held by any section of inquirers as fixing the position of Nimrod. The discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions threw a new light on the subject of Babylonian history, and soon after the decipherment of the inscriptions attention was directed to the question of the identity and age of Nimrod. Sir Henry Rawlinson, the father of Assyrian discovery, first seriously attempted to fix the name of Nimrod in the cuneiform inscriptions, and he endeavoured to find the name in that of the second god of the great Chaldean triad. (See Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” vol. i. p. 117.) The names of this deity are really Enu, Elum, and Bel, and he was evidently worshipped at the dawn of Babylonian history, and is in fact represented as one of the creators of the world; time, moreover, has shown that the cuneiform characters on which the identification was grounded do not bear the phonetic values then supposed.
Sir Henry Rawlinson also suggested (“Ancient Monarchies,” p. 136) that the god Nergal was a deification of Nimrod. Nergal, however, which means literally “the illuminator of Hades,” was a god of the lower world, and even if Nimrod was deified under the name of Nergal this does not explain his position or epoch.
Canon Rawlinson, brother of Sir Henry, in the first volume of his “Ancient Monarchies,” p. 153, and following, makes some judicious remarks on the chronological position of Nimrod, and suggests that he may have reigned a century or two before B.C. 2286; he asserts the historical character of his reign, and supposes him to have founded the Babylonian monarchy, but does not himself identify him with any king known from the inscriptions. At the time when this was written (1871), the conclusions of Canon Rawlinson were the most satisfactory that had been advanced since the discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions. Since this time, however, some new theories have been started, with the idea of identifying Nimrod; one of these, brought forward by Professor Oppert, makes the word a geographical term, but such an explanation is evidently quite insufficient to account for the traditions attached to the name.