Lucifer

In modern and late Medieval Christian thought, Lucifer (Hebrew: הילל heylel – Lucifer, "light-bearer" shining one, morning star, 'Helel' describing the king of Babylon) from (Hebrew: הָלַל halal "to shine," "to flash forth light," "to be boastful") is a fallen angel commonly associated with Satan, the embodiment of evil and enemy of God. Lucifer is generally considered, based on the influence of Christian literature and legend, to have been a prominent archangel in heaven (although some contexts say he was a cherub or a seraph), prior to having been motivated by pride to rebel against God. When the rebellion failed, Lucifer was cast out of heaven, along with a third of the heavenly host, and came to reside on the world.

Lucifer was originally a Latin word meaning "light-bearer" (from lux, "light", and ferre, "to bear, bring"), a Roman astrological term for the "Morning Star", the planet Venus.

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
—Genesis 3:15 ESV

According to David J. Stewart

The reason Lucifer has been understood to be a proper name of the Devil has to do with the Latin translation of the Hebrew term Helel. This word was understood, by some, to be a proper name for the king of Babylon. It means "light bearer," or Lucifero in Latin. The Latin title became a popular name for this evil figure. When the King James translators rendered the Hebrew term into English, they kept the popular term "Lucifer" for the Devil.

The word Lucifer was the direct translation of the Greek eosphorus ("dawn-bearer"; cf. Greek phosphorus, "light-bearer") used by Jerome in the Vulgate. In that passage, Isaiah 14:12, it referred to one of the popular honorific titles of a Babylonian king; however, later interpretations of the text, and the influence of embellishments in works such as Dante's The Divine Comedy and John Milton's Paradise Lost, led to the common idea that Lucifer was a poetic appellation of Satan.

A 2nd-century sculpture of the moon goddess Selene accompanied by Hesperus and Phosphorus (pictured left): the Morning star was later Latinized as "Lucifer". Lucifer is a poetic name for the "morning star", a close translation of the Greek eosphoros, the "dawn-bringer", which appears in the Odyssey and in Hesiod's Theogony.

A classic Roman use of "Lucifer" appears in Virgil's Georgics (III, 324-5):

"Luciferi primo cum sidere frigida rura carpamus, dum mane novum, dum gramina canent"

"Let us hasten, when first the Morning Star appears, To the cool pastures, while the day is new, while the grass is dewy"

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Hammurabi

(Akkadian, meaning "the kinsman is a healer," ca. 1810 BC – 1750 BC), was the sixth king of Babylon. He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire, extending Babylon's control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms.

Hammurabi is known for the set of laws called Hammurabi's Code, one of the first written codes of law in recorded history. Owing to his reputation in modern times as an ancient law-giver, Hammurabi's portrait is in many government buildings throughout the world. Although his empire controlled all of Mesopotamia by the time of his death, his successors were unable to maintain his empire.

Hammurabi was one of the first dynasty kings of the city-state of Babylon, and inherited the throne from his father, Sin-muballit, in 1792 BC.

Babylon was one of the many ancient city-states that dotted the Mesopotamian plain and waged war on each other for control of fertile agricultural land. Though many cultures co-existed in Mesopotamia, Babylonian culture gained a degree of prominence among the literate classes throughout the Middle East The kings who came before Hammurabi had begun to consolidate rule of central Mesopotamia under Babylonian hegemony and, by the time of his reign, had conquered the city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar. Thus Hammurabi ascended to the throne as the king of a minor kingdom in the midst of a complex geopolitical situation, surrounded by the more powerful kingdoms of Shamshi-Adad, Larsa, Eshnunna, and Elam.

The first few decades of Hammurabi's reign were relatively peaceful, although the death of Shamshi-Adad I led to the fragmentation of his northern Semitic empire, and Babylon became comparatively stronger as a result. Hammurabi used this time to undertake a series of public works, including heightening the city walls for defensive purposes, and expanding the temples.

In 1766 BC, the powerful kingdom of Elam, which straddled important trade routes across the Zagros Mountains, invaded the Mesopotamian plain. With allies among the plain states, Elam attacked and destroyed the empire of Eshnunna, destroying a number of cities and imposing its rule on portions of the plain for the first time. In order to consolidate its position, Elam tried to start a war between Hammurabi's Babylonian kingdom and the kingdom of Larsa. Hammurabi and the king of Larsa made an alliance when they discovered this duplicity and were able to crush the Elamites, although Larsa did not contribute greatly to the military effort. Angered by Larsa's failure to come to his aid, Hammurabi turned on that southern power, thus gaining control of the entirety of the lower Mesopotamian plain by 1699 BC.

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