Ahab

Ahab (Hebrew: אַחְאָב, Modern Aẖ'av, Tiberian ʼAḥʼāḇ ; "Brother of the father"; Greek: Αχααβ; Latin: Achab) was the seventh king of Israel since Jeroboam I, the son and successor of Omri, and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, according to the Hebrew Bible.

The existence of Ahab is historically supported also outside of the biblical stories. Shalmaneser III documented 853 BC that he defeated an alliance of a dozen kings in the Battle of Qarqar; one of these was Ahab.

Ahab became king of Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa, king of Judah, and reigned for twenty-two years.William F. Albright dated his reign to 869–850 BC, while E. R. Thiele offered the dates 874–853 BC.Michael D. Coogan dates his reign to 871–852 BC.

Ahab's life and reign

Omri (Ahab's father and founder of the short-lived Omri Dynasty) seems to have been a successful military leader; he is reported in the text of the Moabite Mesha Stele to have "oppressed Moab for many days". During Ahab's reign, Moab, which had been conquered by his father, remained tributary; while Judah, with whose king, Jehoshaphat, he was allied by marriage. Only with Aram Damascus is he believed to have had strained relations.

Captain Ahab (Moby-Dick)

Captain Ahab is a fictional character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, leaving him with a prosthesis made out of whalebone. Instead of leading the Pequod on a whaling voyage for profit, Ahab seeks revenge on the whale and casts his spell over the crew-members to enlist them in his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted and hunted down, Ahab's hate robs him of all caution and denies him revenge. Moby Dick drags Ahab to the bottom of the sea.

Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco calls Ahab "a brilliant personification of the very essence of fanaticism".F. O. Matthiessen calls attention to the fact that Ahab is called an "ungodly god-like man". Ahab's "tragedy is that of an unregenerate will" whose "burning mind is barred out from the exuberance of love" and argues that he "remains damned".D. H. Lawrence felt little sympathy for Ahab and found that the whale should have "torn off both his legs, and a bit more besides".

Ahab (band)

Ahab is a German funeral doom metal band founded in 2004 by Midnattsol guitarists Christian Hector and Daniel Droste and former Endzeit guitarist Stephan Adolph. The band is named after Captain Ahab, a character in the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Along with its name, the band also draws thematic and lyrical inspiration from Moby Dick – some songs even feature direct quotations from the book.

Background

Near the end of 2004, with one song already written, Christian Hector and Daniel Droste decided to form a band. Bassist Stephan Adolph soon joined the line-up, and shortly thereafter, with the help of Cornelius Althammer as a session drummer, the band recorded their first single, The Stream. On 15 April 2005, after several months of rehearsing, the band's first demo, The Oath, was released. The demo was limited to 30 hand-numbered copies and contained the band's first song, "The Stream", as well as two new songs and an outro track. Nearly a year and a half later, The Call of the Wretched Sea, the group's first full-length album was released on Napalm Records.