heir which, as the inscriptions witness, bore the exact name of Ur, or Hur, was the birthplace of Abram. Even the tradition quoted by Eusebius 2 from Eupolemus, a pre-Christian Greek historian, that Ur, or Uria as he called it, is the Babylonian city Camarina, or Chaldæopolis, points to the same view; for, as Professor Rawlinson remarks,3 these names make it a city of the moon-god, which, as we have seen, was the case with Ur. The remains of the town consist of a series of low mounds disposed in an oval shape, measuring about two miles in extent, and dominated by that on which the temple was erected, which is very conspicuous, rising some seventy feet above the plain. This temple is built of large bricks, raised on a basement of great size, and facing the cardinal points. Originally this basement rose in receding stages, on the highest of which was placed the shrine containing the image of the god. It was surrounded by date groves of luxuriant growth; and from its huge size and towering height, the building was conspicuous from all parts of the city, and compelled every inhabitant and wayfarer to recognize the worship of Hurki, the great moongod. There is a peculiarity in the buidling which confirms the fact gathered from the inscriptions, that it was the work of two different monarchs, the earliest of whom is supposed to have reigned about B.C. 2200. In the lower stage the bricks are cemented with bitumen, in the upper with lime mortar. The cylinders recording the name of the founder were found, as usually in Chaldæan buildings, deposited at the corners.

Among the edifices raised by the builder of this temple was a palace called the house of Rubu-tsiru, "the supreme prince," the ruins of which are still to be traced. What this monarch left uncompleted his son Dungi finished; and this son extended his father's kingdom northward, so that he has left traces of his handiwork in the rebuilding of the temple of Erech, and in a temple which he erected at Babylon. It was probably in his time that Abram was born.

The present appearance of Chaldæa is singularly monotonous

Schrader, "Die Keilinschriften des Alt. Test.," 129 f.

3 " Dictionary of the Bible," Art. Ur. Schrader, 130. Camarina, explained by Arabic etymology, would signify "moon-town."

4 "Ancient Monarchies," i. 16 f. 157; Loftus," Travels in Chaldæa,” pp. 127 ff.

and uninteresting. Being strictly an alluvial region, owing its existence to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, it is a level plain, unrelieved by mountain or hill. But its amazing fertility is unquestioned, and with a teeming population and under a system of high cultivation, it must have presented a striking contrast to its present barren and dispeopled condition. The dreary stretches of sandy waste were once well watered and cultivated, and were mines of wealth to the industrious peasant. Herodotus, who himself visited the country, thus describes its fecundity (Herod. i. 193) : “The land is but little watered by rain, but the root of the corn is nourished by other means. It is fed by the river, not by its overflow, as in Egypt, but by artificial irrigation. No part of the known world is so fruitful in grain. No attempt, indeed, is made to grow the fig, the vine,' or the olive; but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundred-fold, and in the best seasons even three hundred-fold. Wheat and barley often carry a blade of four fingers in breadth. As for millet and sesame I shall not say, though within my own knowledge, to what a surprising height they grow; for I am not ignorant that what I have already said concerning the produce of Babylonia must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country. The whole plain is covered with palm trees, most of them bearing fruit, and from them they make bread, wine, and honey." Modern travellers recognize the productive powers of the soil while deploring the neglect and idleness which have led to its present miserable condition. The two great natural products are the wheat plant and the date palm. The former, it is said, grew so rankly that it was mown twice, and then fed off by cattle, in order to check its luxuriance and induce it to run to ear. The beautiful date palm gives a charm to the monotonous landscape, which in that country can scarcely be over estimated. Its utility is proverbial, and it was applied to more purposes than Herodotus mentions. Besides furnishing the inhabitants with bread from its fruit and pith,. wine and honey from its sap, it supplied firing, ropes, vinegar, and a famous mash for fattening cattle. Fruits, such as pomegranates, apples, grapes, and tamarisks, were abundant; but

I Herodotus is mistaken in asserting that the vine was not cultivated. Wine was brought down the Euphrates. See Rawlinson on Herodotus,

i. 194.

the country produced no great forest trees; and the cypress, acacia, and palm could alone be encountered in many days' journey. To supply this lack of timber the Chaldæans had recourse to the enormous reeds which are almost peculiar to this region, and of which to this day the Arabs make both houses and boats. Reeds were also used in constructing some of the great Chaldæan buildings. They were placed in the form of matting as a foundation for successive layers of bricks, and by projecting beyond the external surface served for a time to protect the earthen mass from disintegration. The country produced no stone for building; if any was used, it had to be imported or conveyed from a long distance down the rivers. But excellent clay was everywhere found, and sun-dried bricks cemented with bitumen formed the usual material from which the edifices were constructed.

The religion of the Chaldæans was markedly polytheistic, and seems to have been developed from the worship of the celestial bodies. But it was not as mere powers of nature that these were adored, but as real persons with a history and character, many of whom bear a striking resemblance to the personages of classical mythology. The principal deity is Il (the Hebrew El) or Ra; then follows a triad, Ana, Bil, or Belus, and Hea or Hoa, who correspond partly in attributes to the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, and have each their wife. Another triad succeeds, accompanied by female powers or wives, viz., Vul or Iva, Shamas, San, or Sansi (the Sun), and Sin or Hurki (the Moon). The predominating influence of Ur caused the worship of the moon-god (whose name means the Protector of the land) to extend far and wide, and to eclipse the fame of Shamas (the Sun) in most towns of Babylonia. Next in order comes a group of five minor deities, representatives of the five planets respectively, Nin or Ninip (Saturn), Bel-Merodach (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Ishtar or Nana (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury). These principal gods are followed by numerous divinities of the second and third order, which at present it is impossible to describe or classify. The older com

Loftus, "Travels in Chaldæa," p. 168.

Rawlinson, "Five Monarchies," i. chap. 4. There is a list of deities in "Assurbanipal's Inscriptions." See" Records of the Past," ix. Comp. G. Smith, "History of Babylonia," p. 74; and Rawlinson, Herodotus," vol. i. essay x.

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mentaries, both Jewish and patristic, attributed to the Chaldæans the worship of fire, and some legends connected with Abraham are based on this assumption. But there is no trace of this practice in the monumental records ; and the writers who allude to it in connection with Ur seem to confound the Magian tenets prevalent in Media and Persia with those held by other Eastern nations. Of the degraded nature of the Chaldæan religion there can be no doubt. However poetically the popular faith was treated by men of polish and learning, and although the received mythology was moulded into graceful forms vying with the best creations of Greek and Roman story, yet the mass of men never rose to these higher conceptions. Believing that their own destinies and the forces of nature were controlled by capricious deities without moral sense, they resorted to propitiatory sacrifices and prayers where they ought to have used prudence and ordinary means, and neglected many sciences and arts which otherwise they would have studied and practised. Thus instead of seeking to cure disease or to alleviate pain by the use of medicines or surgical appliances, they resorted to charms and spells. A great portion of Babylonian literature now extant is composed of formulæ for warding off disease and sorcery, for bewitching people, or for exorcising evil influences. There are also many treatises on omens and divination. From all this we gather that the popular religion was of a base and sensual type, one that tended to degrade, rather than to elevate, its adherents.

The population of Chaldæa was of a mixed origin, but chiefly of Cushite descent, as the Bible witnesses (Gen. x. 8-10). Modern investigators have supposed that Babylonia was first peopled by Turanian tribes (allied to the Turks and Tartars of the present day), who invented the cuneiform system of writing, and that they were conquered and dispossessed by the Semites. Whether this be true or not, it is certain, says Professor Sayce,1 that these early settlers spoke, as those tribes did, an agglutinative language, that is, a language in which grammatical relations are formed not by inflections, but by the attachment of independent words, as e.g. of pronouns to verbs to from the conjugation, and of prepositions to substantives to form declension. This was

In note to G. Smith's "History of Babylonia," p. 35. See Max Müller, "Science of Language," i. 303.

allied to the dialects spoken in Elam, and it is probable that the Accadian language, as it is called, was the medium of communication between the various peoples of a very wide district on the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. At Ur, one of the primitive capitals, as the great port of the country, was to be found a collection of many nationalities. The ships of Ur traded with Ethiopia and the lands bordering on the Red Sea, which term included both the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean; and the people were thus brought into contact with foreign nations, and many settlers from distant countries doubtless took up their abode in the city. One Semitic family we know settled there, the family from which sprung Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, the friend of God, whose story we have to tell. The remote ancestor of this family was Eber, who descended through Arphaxad from Shem. Arphaxad, as the name of a country, represents a region in the north of Assyria, on the borders of Armenia; from this region the Hebrews, or posterity of Eber, migrated southward. The usual cause of such like emigrations is doubtless that restless love of change and desire for new fields of enterprise which are implanted in man for wise purposes. We do not know the particular impulse which led these Shemites, whose predilections were for a pastoral life, thus to become inhabitants of a busy, bustling, unquiet city. If they brought with them their simple habits, they must have felt utterly alien in the midst of the commerce, the arts, and civilization, of this seaport. The profligate idol worship which here met their observation, even if they too soon learned to acquiesce in it, must at first have seemed an outrage on their own pure religious tradition. Under the open heaven, in the free air of the plain, they could have worshipped the Lord as their fore. father Noah had worshipped; here the atmosphere was noxious with idolatrous associations, and everything around tended to degrade their higher conceptions and to facilitate the descent to false religion.

The inhabitants of Chaldæa, however, were not confined to cities. There was an agricultural as well as an urban class; and there was, besides these, also a nomadic population who dwelt in tents, and roamed the country with their flocks and herds. It is very likely that Terah's clan was of the latter class, and that the name "Ur" included the neighbouring district. The Chaldæans were a peaceable nation, and never, as