Texts and their transmission

Person

Queen of Sheba

The ruler in narratives of Solomon's encounter with Sheba; neither First Kings nor the Quran gives her a personal name, and her historical identification is unresolved.

Solomon's meeting with the Queen of Sheba in British embroidery, ca. 1700: later artistic reception, not a historical portrait. Met 64.101.1307; public domain

Person

Justinian I

Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565 CE; his reign is used in a proposed dating of a Syriac Alexander Legend layer.

Sixth-century San Vitale mosaic at Ravenna portraying Justinian and his court. Contemporary imperial art, not a photograph or a barrier scene

Person

Tommaso Tesei

Scholar of late-antique traditions and the Quran who proposes an earlier layer for the Syriac Alexander Legend.

Person

Sebastian P. Brock

Syriac literature scholar who distinguishes the Syriac Alexander Romance, Christian Legend and poem.

Person

Sverre Bøe

Norwegian New Testament and Revelation scholar who compared Gog and Magog in Ezekiel and Revelation.

Person

William A. Tooman

Professor of Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism at St Andrews whose reading of Gog differs from the Marduk proposal.

Person

Casey A. Strine

Scholar of ancient Israel, Judah and the Near East who proposed reading Ezekiel's Gog in relation to Babylonian Marduk traditions.

Person

Christoph Rösel

Author of the 2012 German WiBiLex entry on Gog and Magog, surveying explanations of the names and their evidence.

Person

Gyges of Lydia

Seventh-century BCE king of Lydia in western Anatolia, called Guggu in an Assyrian inscription; his identification with Ezekiel's Gog is unproven.

Assyrian tablet of about 660 BCE naming Gyges of Lydia; a written witness, not the king's portrait

Person

Ibn Taymiyya

Hanbali Muslim scholar (1263–1328) based in Damascus, who wrote on interpretation, law and theology; modern research considers his influence on identifying Abraham's son in the sacrifice story.

Literary figure

Agamemnon

Figure of Greek narrative, commander of the expedition to Troy and Iphigenia's father in Euripides; the play does not independently establish his historicity.

Agamemnon Musters the Greek Troops at Aulis, later European Story of Iphigenia tapestry, The Met 226955; artistic reception, not historical evidence for the figure

Person

Sarah

Abraham's wife and Isaac's mother in Genesis; her story with Hagar and Ishmael appears in chapters 16 and 21, not in the Genesis 22 scene itself.

Georg Pencz, Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham, ca. 1543, The Met 2012.136.766.2; later artistic depiction

Person

Hagar

Figure in Genesis: an Egyptian woman in Sarah and Abraham's household and Ishmael's mother; chapters 16 and 21 narrate her flight and later expulsion and survival.

Camille Corot, Hagar in the Wilderness, 1835, The Met 38.64; later artistic depiction of Genesis, not a historical likeness

Person

Ishmael

Son of Hagar and Abraham in Genesis; later Muslim interpretation identified him with the unnamed son in Qur'an 37's sacrifice scene.

George Richmond's Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness, 1829–33, The Met 2002.119a,b. Later artistic reception of Genesis, not a historical likeness

Person

Isaac

Son of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis; named explicitly in Genesis 22's sacrifice episode, while named after the unnamed-son scene in Qur'an 37.

Rembrandt's etching Abraham and Isaac, 1645, The Met 29.107.26. A dialogue imagined by the artist centuries after the text

Person

Abraham

Central figure in Genesis, the Qur'an and Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions; the sacrifice study compares what each text says about him.

Agostino Veneziano's engraving Abraham's Sacrifice, 1516–18, The Met 17.50.16-80. Later European artistic reception, not a historical likeness

Person

T. E. Kelley

Co-author with Raleigh Heth of a 2021 article on Isaac and Iphigenia; the published record gives only the initials T. E.

Person

Raleigh Heth

Scholar of ancient Mesopotamian and eastern Mediterranean literature; co-authored a 2021 comparison of Isaac and Iphigenia.

Person

Younus Y. Mirza

Scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies whose work compares biblical and Qur'anic narratives; published a 2013 study of Abraham's intended sacrifice.

Person

Iphigenia

Mythic and dramatic daughter of Agamemnon. In Iphigenia among the Taurians, Artemis rescues her at the altar and substitutes a deer.

Second-century BCE Boeotian bowl with scenes from Iphigenia at Aulis, The Met 31.11.2. It does not show the deer substitution in Iphigenia among the Taurians

Contextual definition

Euripides

Fifth-century BCE Greek tragedian, died 406 BCE. In his Iphigenia among the Taurians, the heroine recounts a deer substituted for her.

Roman bust identified as Euripides, after a Greek model of c. 330 BCE; Vatican Museums inv. 302. Made after his death, it cannot establish his actual features

Contextual definition

Ibn Kathir

Syrian Qur'anic exegete and historian (c. 1301–1373 CE) who favors Ishmael in his reading of the sacrifice account.

Title page of volume 1 of the Egyptian al-Manar printing of Ibn Kathir's commentary, 1343–1347 AH/c. 1924–1928 CE; a later printed edition, not a fourteenth-century image

Contextual definition

Al-Tabari

Abbasid-era historian and Qur'anic exegete (c. 839–923 CE). His commentary records competing views on Abraham's son, then favors Isaac.

Title page of volume 2 of an Egyptian printed edition of al-Tabari's Jamiʿ al-bayan, 1323 AH/c. 1905 CE. It is a later edition, not his manuscript or portrait

Contextual definition

Flavius Josephus

First-century Jewish historian who retold older narratives, including Abraham’s test, in Jewish Antiquities.

Twelfth-century Latin copy of Jewish Antiquities, Cologne Cathedral Library MS 162, fol. 41r. The page begins Book IV, not the Book I sacrifice account

Traditionally attributed author

Homer

The name to which Greek tradition attributes the Iliad and Odyssey.

Roman portrait bust representing Homer, second century CE; British Museum 1805,0703.85. An artistic likeness made long after the epics, rather than a contemporary portrait

Person

Philo of Byblos

Writer of about the first–second centuries CE and author of Phoenician History, distinct from Philo of Alexandria.

Modern view of the Byblos remains, Lebanon, 4 September 2008. Photograph by Vyacheslav Argenberg; context for Philo of Byblos’s name, not a portrait or identification of his library

Contextual definition

Hupasiya

Inara’s human helper in the first Hittite Illuyanka account, who binds the serpent after the feast.

Modern diagram of Hupasiya’s two relationships in the first account: helping Inara and wanting to return to his wife and children. The ending is marked as damaged; no unpreserved fate or portrait is supplied

Contextual definition

Pseudo-Apollodorus

Name used for the author of the Bibliotheca, a Greek mythographic collection usually dated to the first or second century CE.

Title page of the Bibliothèque d’Apollodore in E. Clavier’s edition, Paris, 1805, volume I, in Greek and French. It documents a later printed edition; the title’s author attribution is traditional

Contextual definition

Hesiod

Greek poet whose major work is generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, including the Theogony.

Hesiod and the Muse, an 1891 oil-on-wood painting by Gustave Moreau, Musée d’Orsay RF 1961 7. A modern artistic reception of the ancient poet, not a contemporary likeness

Contextual definition

Noah

Noah is the flood-story figure in Genesis and a prophet in the Qur’an

Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark, an etching by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, around 1650–1655 CE. The Met, 2012.136.525. A seventeenth-century European artistic reading of the story, with the ark visible in the background

Contextual definition

Muhammad, prophet of Islam

Muhammad is the prophet of Islam, living about 570–632 CE in the setting of Islam’s seventh-century emergence

The Green Dome and minarets of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, on 26 November 2025. This contemporary photograph shows part of the place associated with Muhammad’s life; the visible buildings reflect later architectural phases

Contextual definition

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is Christianity’s central figure, who lived in the first century CE

Christ between two angels in a sixth-century mosaic at the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. He is shown seated above a blue sphere in a cosmic scene. Photograph by José Luiz, 17 September 2016

Contextual definition

Solomon

Solomon is the biblical king, David’s son, associated in Kings with Jerusalem and building the temple

The Judgment of Solomon, an oil painting by Nicolas Poussin from 1649, in the Louvre, INV 7277. It depicts the judgement between two women in 1 Kings 3 and illustrates the story’s reception in seventeenth-century European art

Contextual definition

Abi-milku

Abi-milku was a fourteenth-century BCE ruler of Tyre, known from letters to Egypt’s king

Akkadian letter from Abi-milku, ruler of Tyre, to the Egyptian king, preserved on a clay tablet from the Amarna archive. The Met dates it to about 1347–1330 BCE; object 24.2.12

Contextual definition

Pepi II

Pepi II was an Egyptian king of the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE

Queen Ankhnes-meryre II with her son King Pepi II on her lap, in an Egyptian-alabaster statuette of the Sixth Dynasty, late third millennium BCE. Brooklyn Museum, 39.119. Photograph by Stephen Sandoval, February 2009

Contextual definition

Merenre I

Merenre I was an Egyptian king of the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE

Egyptian-alabaster vase shaped as a mother monkey holding her young, inscribed with King Merenre I’s name. The Met dates it to about 2255–2246 BCE; object 30.8.134. The royal inscription appears on the shoulder

Contextual definition

Unas

Unas was the last king of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty, in the late third millennium BCE

The remains of Unas’s pyramid at Saqqara, from the late Fifth Dynasty, around the twenty-fourth century BCE. Its interior preserves the earliest known Pyramid Texts inscribed in a royal pyramid. Photograph by Vincent Brown, 2017

Contextual definition

Shabaka

Shabaka was a Kushite king of Egypt’s Twenty-fifth Dynasty in the late eighth century BCE

Bronze head from a statuette identified by Turin’s Museo Egizio as King Shabaka, of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The museum dates the object to 722–655 BCE; inventory Cat. 1394. The image is released by the museum under CC0

Contextual definition

Papanikri

Papanikri is the named ritual specialist associated with a Hittite ritual addressing the omen of a damaged birth stool

Part of the Great Temple ruins at Hattusha, the Hittite capital, near modern Boğazköy in Turkey. UNESCO dates the temple remains to the thirteenth century BCE. Photograph taken on 17 March 2013, providing context for the city that preserved collections of Hittite rituals

Person

Khidr

Name of the servant in Islamic reports about Moses’ journey; al-Kahf leaves him unnamed.

Modern method diagram: verses, reports, commentary and reception are distinct layers; later names are not Quranic wording