Some historians have placed the area where Arioch ruled in
Anatolia, but theories as to its specific locations differ, with some claiming it was in
Pontus while others cite
Cappadocia and
Antioch. There are also sources which associated Ellasar with the kingdom of
Larsa and suggested that Arioch could be one of its kings called
Eri-Aku, an epithet of either
Warad-Sin or
Rim-Sîn I, since both are described as son of
Kudur-Mabuk. By the 20th century, this theory became popular so that it was common to identify Arioch with
Eriaku through the alternative reading of either Rim-Sîn or his brother Warad-Sin, who were both believed to be contemporary with
Hammurabi. Others identify Ellasar with
Ilānṣurā, which is a city known from the second millennium BC
Mari archives in the vicinity of the north of
Mari, Syria, and Arioch with Arriuk, who appears in the Mari archives as a subordinate of
Zimri-Lim. The identification of Arioch with the ruler Arriuk mentioned in the Mari archives has been recently supported by the
Assyrologists
Jean-Marie Durand and
Stephanie Dalley. Some modern scholars consider Arioch as a literary figure, not a historical figure, but in the case of Ellasar, they connect it to the name
Alashiya, not Larsa or Cappadocia. Ellasar is related to the name of Elishah in Genesis 10:4, which is why it is presumed to have referred to
Alashiya, an ancient kingdom on
Cyprus. The name Arioch could have originated from the foreigner or foreign story that Jewish people learnt from the foreign diaspora community, which included Elamites and many other foreigners, as mentioned in
Ezra 4. ==Adaptations by later writers==