Patriarchal Palestine Part 2

We might perhaps imagine that the Egyptian artists have caricatured their adversaries. But this is not the case. Precisely the same profile of face, sometimes even exaggerated in its ugliness, is represented on the Hitt.i.te monuments by the native sculptors themselves. It is one of the surest proofs we possess that these monuments, with their still undeciphered inscriptions, are of Hitt.i.te origin. They belong to the people whom Israelites, Egyptians, a.s.syrians, and Armenians united in calling Hitt.i.tes.

In marked contrast to the Hitt.i.tes stood the Amorites. They too are depicted on the walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs. While the Hitt.i.te type of features is Mongoloid, that of the Amorite is European.

His nose is straight and somewhat pointed, his lips and nostrils thin, his cheek-bones high, his mouth firm and regular, his forehead expressive of intelligence. He has a fair amount of whisker, ending in a pointed beard. At Abu-Simbel the skin is painted a pale yellow--the Egyptian equivalent for white--his eyes blue, and his beard and eyebrows red. At Medinet Habu, his skin, as Prof. Petrie expresses it, is "rather pinker than flesh-colour," while in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty at Thebes it is painted white, the eyes and hair being a light red-brown.

The Amorite, it is clear, must be cla.s.sed with the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Libyans of the Egyptian monuments, whose modern descendants are the Kabyles and other Berber tribes of Northern Africa. The latter are not only European in type, they claim special affinities to the blond, "golden-haired" Kelt. And their tall stature agrees well with what the Old Testament has to tell us about the Amorites. They too were cla.s.sed among the Rephaim or "giants," by the side of whom the Israelite invaders were but as "gra.s.shoppers."

While the Canaanites inhabited the lowlands, the highlands were the seat of the Amorites (Num. xiii. 29). This, again, is in accordance with their European affinities. They flourished best in the colder and more bracing climate of the mountains, as do the Berber tribes of Northern Africa to-day. The blond, blue-eyed race is better adapted to endure the cold than the heat.

Amorite tribes and kingdoms were to be found in all parts of Palestine.

Southward, as we have seen, Kadesh-barnea was in "the mountain of the Amorites," while Chedor-laomer found them on the western sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea. When Abraham pitched his tent in the plain above Hebron, it was in the possession of three Amorite chieftains, and at the time of the Israelitish conquest, Hebron and Jerusalem, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon were all Amorite (Josh. x. 5). Jacob a.s.sured Joseph the inheritance of his tribe should be in that district of Shechem which the patriarch had taken "out of the hand of the Amorite" (Gen. xlviii. 22), and on the eastern side of the Jordan were the Amorite kingdoms of Og and Sihon. But we learn from the Egyptian inscriptions, and more especially from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the chief seat of Amorite power lay immediately to the north of Palestine. Here was "the land of the Amorites," to which frequent reference is made by the monuments, among the ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, from Hamath southward to Hermon. On the east it was bounded by the desert, on the west by the cities of Phoenicia.

In early days, long before the age of Abraham, the Amorites must already have been the predominant population in this part of Syria. When the Babylonian king, Sargon of Akkad, carried his victorious arms to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, it was against "the land of the Amorites"

that his campaigns were directed. From that time forward this was the name under which Syria, and more particularly Canaan, was known to the Babylonians. The geographical extension of the term was parallel to that of "Hitt.i.tes" among the a.s.syrians, of "Canaan" among the Israelites, and of "Palestine" among ourselves. But it bears witness to the important part which was played by the Amorites in what we must still call the prehistoric age of Syria, as well as to the extent of the area which they must have occupied.

Of course it does not follow that the whole of this area was occupied at one and the same time. Indeed we know that the conquest of the northern portion of Moab by the Amorite king Sihon took place only a short time before the Israelitish invasion, and part of the Amorite song of triumph on the occasion has been preserved in the Book of Numbers. "There is a fire gone out of Heshbon," it said, "a flame from the city of Sihon: it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites." (Num. xxi. 28, 29.) In the south, again, the Amorites do not seem to have made their way beyond Hazezon-Tamar, while the Tel el-Amarna tablets make it probable that neither Bashan nor Jerusalem were as yet Amorite at the time they were written. It may be that the Amorite conquests in the south were one of the results of the fall of the Egyptian empire and the Hitt.i.te irruption.

Between the Hitt.i.te and the Amorite the geographical table of Genesis interposes the Jebusite, and the Book of Numbers similarly states that "the Hitt.i.tes and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains." The Jebusites, however, were merely the local tribe which in the early days of the Israelitish occupation of Canaan were in possession of Jerusalem, and they were probably either Hitt.i.te or Amorite in race. At any rate there is no trace of them in the cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna. On the contrary, in these Jerusalem is still known only by its old name of Uru-salim; of the name Jebus there is not a hint. But the letters show us that Ebed-Tob, the native king of Jerusalem and humble va.s.sal of the Pharaoh, was being hard pressed by his enemies, and that, in spite of his urgent appeals for help, the Egyptians were unable to send any. His enemy were the Khabiri or "Confederates," about whose identification there has been much discussion, but who were a.s.sisted by the Beduin chief Labai and his sons. One by one the towns belonging to the territory of Jerusalem fell into the hands of his adversaries, and at last, as we learn from another letter, Ebed-Tob himself along with his capital was captured by the foe.

It was this event, perhaps, which made Jerusalem a Jebusite city. If so, we must see in the enemies of Ebed-Tob the Jebusites of the Old Testament.

The Girgas.h.i.te is named after the Amorite, but who he may have been it is hard to say. In the Egyptian epic composed by the court-poet Pentaur, to commemorate the heroic deeds of Ramses II. in his struggle with the Hitt.i.tes, mention is twice made of "the country of Qarqish." It was one of those which had sent contingents to the Hitt.i.te army. But it seems to have been situated in Northern Syria, if not in Asia Minor, so that unless we can suppose that some of its inhabitants had followed in the wake of the Hitt.i.tes and settled in Palestine, it is not easy to see how they could be included among the sons of Canaan. The Hivites, whose name follows that of the Girgas.h.i.tes, are simply the "villagers" or fellahin as opposed to the townsfolk. They are thus synonymous with the Perizzites, who take their place in Gen. xv. 20, and whose name has the same signification. But whereas the Perizzites were especially the country population of Southern Palestine, the Hivites were those of the north. In two pa.s.sages, indeed, the name appears to be used in an ethnic sense, once in Gen. x.x.xvi. 2, where we read that Esau married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," and once in Josh. xi. 3, where reference is made to "the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh."

But a comparison of the first pa.s.sage with a later part of the chapter (vv. 20, 24, 25) proves that "Hivite" is a corrupt reading for "Horite,"

while it is probable that in the second pa.s.sage "Hitt.i.te" ought to be read for "Hivite."

The four last sons of Canaan represent cities, and not tribes. Arka, called Irqat in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and now known as Tel 'Arqa, was one of the inland cities of Phoenicia, in the mountains between the Orontes and the sea. Sin, which is mentioned by Tiglath-pileser III., was in the same neighbourhood, as well as Zemar (now Sumra), which, like Arvad (the modern Ruad), is named repeatedly in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. It was at the time an important Phoenician fortress,--"perched like a bird upon the rock,"--and was under the control of the governor of Gebal. Arvad was equally important as a sea-port, and its ships were used for war as well as for commerce. As for Hamath (now Hamah), the Khamat and Amat of the a.s.syrian texts, it was already a leading city in the days of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Thothmes III. includes it among his Syrian conquests under the name of Amatu, as also does Ramses III. The Hitt.i.te inscriptions discovered there go to show that, like Kadesh on the Orontes, it fell at one time into Hitt.i.te hands.

Such then was the ethnographical map of Palestine in the Patriarchal Age. Canaanites in the lowlands, Amorites and Hitt.i.tes in the highlands contended for the mastery. In the desert of the south were the Amalekite Beduin, ever ready to raid and murder their settled neighbours. The mountains of Seir were occupied by the Horites, while prehistoric tribes, who probably belonged to the Amorite race, inhabited the plateau east of the Jordan.

This was the Palestine to which Abraham migrated, but it was a Palestine which his migration was destined eventually to change. Before many generations had pa.s.sed Moab and Ammon, the children of his nephew, took the place of the older population of the eastern table-land, while Edom settled in Mount Seir. A few generations more, and Israel too entered into its inheritance in Canaan itself. The Amorites were extirpated or became tributary, and the valleys of the Jordan and Kishon were seized by the invading tribes. The cities of the extreme south had already become Philistine, and the strangers from Caphtor had supplanted in them the Avim of an earlier epoch.

Meanwhile the waves of foreign conquest had spread more than once across the country. Canaan had been made subject to Babylonia, and had received in exchange for its independence the gift of Babylonian culture. Next it was Egypt which entered upon its career of Asiatic conquest, and Canaan for a while was an Egyptian province. But the Egyptian dominion in its turn pa.s.sed away, and Palestine was left the prey of other a.s.sailants, of the Hitt.i.tes and the Beduin, of the people of Aram Naharaim and the northern hordes. Egyptians and Babylonians, Hitt.i.tes and Mesopotamians mingled with the earlier races of the country and obliterated the older landmarks. Before the Patriarchal Age came to an end, the ethnographical map of Canaan had undergone a profound change.

CHAPTER III

THE BABYLONIANS IN CANAAN AND THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

It is in the cuneiform records of Babylonia that we catch the first glimpse of the early history of Canaan. Babylonia was not yet united under a single head. From time to time some prince arose whose conquests allowed him to claim the imperial t.i.tle of "king of Sumer and Akkad," of Southern and Northern Babylonia, but the claim was never of long duration, and often it signified no more than a supremacy over the other rulers of the country.

It was while Babylonia was thus divided into more than one kingdom, that the first Chaldaean empire of which we know was formed by the military skill of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was of Semitic origin, but his birth seems to have been obscure. His father, Itti-Bel, is not given the t.i.tle of king, and the later legends which gathered around his name declared that his mother was of low degree, that his father he knew not, and that his father's brother lived in the mountain-land. Born in secrecy in the city of Azu-pirani, "whence the elephants issue forth," he was launched by his mother on the waters of the Euphrates in an ark of bulrushes daubed with pitch. The river carried the child to Akki the irrigator, who had compa.s.sion upon it, and brought it up as his own son. So Sargon became an agriculturist and gardener like his adopted father, till the G.o.ddess Istar beheld and loved him, and eventually gave him his kingdom and crown.

Whatever may have been the real history of Sargon's rise to power, certain it is that he showed himself worthy of it. He built himself a capital, which perhaps was Akkad near Sippara, and there founded a library stocked with books on clay and well provided with scribes. The standard works on astronomy and terrestrial omens were compiled for it, the first of which was translated into Greek by Berossos in days long subsequent. But it was as a conqueror and the founder of the first Semitic empire in Western Asia that posterity chiefly remembered him. He overthrew his rivals at home, and made himself master of Northern Babylonia. Then he marched into Elam on the east, and devastated its fields. Next he turned his attention to the west. Four times did he make his way to "the land of the Amorites," until at last it was thoroughly subdued. His final campaign occupied three years. The countries "of the sea of the setting sun" acknowledged his dominion, and he united them with his former conquests into "a single" empire. On the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean he erected images of himself in token of his victories, and caused the spoil of Cyprus "to pa.s.s over into the countries of the sea." Towards the end of his reign a revolt broke out against him in Babylonia, and he was besieged in the city of Akkad, but he "issued forth and smote" his enemies and utterly destroyed them. Then came his last campaign against Northern Mesopotamia, from which he returned with abundant prisoners and spoil.

Sargon's son and successor was Naram-Sin, "the beloved of the Moon-G.o.d,"

who continued the conquests of his father. His second campaign was against the land of Magan, the name under which Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula were known to the Babylonians. The result of it was the addition of Magan to his empire and the captivity of its king.

The copper mines of Magan, which are noticed in an early Babylonian geographical list, made its acquisition coveted alike by Babylonians and Egyptians. We find the Pharaohs of the third dynasty already establishing their garrisons and colonies of miners in the province of Mafkat, as they called it, and slaughtering the Beduin who interfered with them. The history of Naram-Sin shows that its conquest was equally an object of the Babylonian monarchs at the very outset of their history. But whereas the road from Egypt to Sinai was short and easy, that from Babylonia was long and difficult. Before a Babylonian army could march into the peninsula it was needful that Syria should be secure in the rear. The conquest of Palestine, in fact, was necessary before the copper mines of Sinai could fall into Babylonian hands.

The consolidation of Sargon's empire in the west, therefore, was needful before the invasion of the country of Magan could take place, and the invasion accordingly was reserved for Naram-Sin to make. The father had prepared the way; the son obtained the great prize--the source of the copper that was used in the ancient world.

The fact that the whole of Syria is described in the annals of Sargon as "the land of the Amorites," implies, not only that the Amorites were the ruling population in the country, but also that they must have extended far to the south. The "land of the Amorites" formed the basis and starting-point for the expedition of Naram-Sin into Magan; it must, therefore, have reached to the southern border of Palestine, if not even farther. The road trodden by his forces would have been the same as that which was afterwards traversed by Chedor-laomer, and would have led him through Kadesh-barnea. Is it possible that the Amorites were already in possession of the mountain-block within which Kadesh stood, and that this was their extreme limit to the south?

There were other names by which Palestine and Syria were known to the early Babylonians, besides the general t.i.tle of "the land of the Amorites." One of these was Tidanum or Tidnum; another was Sanir or Shenir. There was yet another, the reading of which is uncertain, though it may be Khidhi or t.i.ti.

Mr. Boscawen has pointed out a coincidence that is at least worthy of attention. The first Babylonian monarch who penetrated into the peninsula of Sinai bore a name compounded with that of the Moon-G.o.d, which thus bears witness to a special veneration for that deity. Now the name of Mount Sinai is similarly derived from that of the Babylonian Moon-G.o.d Sin. It was the high place where the G.o.d must have been adored from early times under his Babylonian name. It thus points to Babylonian influence, if not to the presence of Babylonians on the spot. Can it have been that the mountain whereon the G.o.d of Israel afterwards revealed Himself to Moses was dedicated to the Moon-G.o.d of Babylon by Naram-Sin the Chaldaen conqueror?

If such indeed were the case, it would have been more than two thousand years before the Israelitish exodus. Nabonidos, the last king of the later Babylonian empire, who had a fancy for antiquarian exploration, tells us that Naram-Sin reigned 3200 years before his own time, and therefore about 3750 B.C. The date, startlingly early as it seems to be, is indirectly confirmed by other evidence, and a.s.syriologists consequently have come to accept it as approximately correct.

How long Syria remained a part of the empire of Sargon of Akkad we do not know. But it must have been long enough for the elements of Babylonian culture to be introduced into it. The small stone cylinders used by the Babylonians for sealing their clay doc.u.ments thus became known to the peoples of the West. More than one has been found in Syria and Cyprus which go back to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin, while there are numerous others which are more or less barbarous attempts on the part of the natives to imitate the Babylonian originals. But the imitations prove that with the fall of Sargon's empire the use of seal-cylinders in Syria, and consequently of doc.u.ments for sealing, did not disappear. That knowledge of writing, which was a characteristic of Babylonian civilization, must have been carried with it to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

The seal-cylinders were engraved, sometimes with figures of men and G.o.ds, sometimes with symbols only. Very frequently lines of cuneiform writing were added, and a common formula gave the name of the owner of the seal, along with those of his father and of the deity whom he worshipped. One of the seal-cylinders found in Cyprus describes the owner as an adorer of "the G.o.d Naram-Sin." It is true that its workmanship shows it to belong to a much later date than the age of Naram-Sin himself, but the legend equally shows that the name of the conqueror of Magan was still remembered in the West. Another cylinder discovered in the Lebanon mentions "the G.o.ds of the Amorite," while a third from the same locality bears the inscription: "Multal-ili, the son of Ili-isme-anni, the worshipper of the G.o.d Nin-si-zida." The name of the G.o.d signified in the old pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea "the lord of the upright horn," while it is worth notice that the names of the owner and his father are compounded simply with the word _ili_ or _el_, "G.o.d," not with the name of any special divinity. Multal-ili means "Provident is G.o.d," Ili-isme-anni, "O my G.o.d, hear me!"

Many centuries have to elapse before the monuments of Babylonia again throw light on the history of Canaan. Somewhere about B.C. 2700, a high-priest was ruling in a city of Southern Babylonia, under the suzerainty of Dungi, the king of Ur. The high-priest's name was Gudea, and his city (now called Tel-loh by the Arabs) was known as Lagas. The excavations made here by M. de Sarzec have brought to light temples and palaces, collections of clay books and carved stone statues, which go back to the early days of Babylonian history. The larger and better part of the monuments belong to Gudea, who seems to have spent most of his life in building and restoring the sanctuaries of the G.o.ds. Diorite statues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon them state that the stone out of which they were made was brought from the land of Magan. On the lap of one of them is a plan of the royal palace, with the scale of measurement marked on the edge of a sort of drawing-board. Prof. Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders of Egypt.

The diorite of Sinai was not the only material which was imported into Babylonia for the buildings of Gudea. Beams of cedar and box were brought from Mount Ama.n.u.s at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, blocks of stone were floated down the Euphrates from Barsip near Carchemish, gold-dust came from Melukhkha, the "salt" desert to the east of Egypt which the Old Testament calls Havilah; copper was conveyed from the north of Arabia, limestone from the Lebanon ("the mountains of Tidanum"), and another kind of stone from Subsalla in the mountains of the Amorite land. Before beams of wood and blocks of stone could thus be brought from the distant West, it was necessary that trade between Babylonia and the countries of the Mediterranean should have long been organized, that the roads throughout Western Asia should have been good and numerous, and that Babylonian influence should have been extended far and wide. The conquests of Sargon and Naram-Sin had borne fruit in the commerce that had followed upon them.

Once more the curtain falls, and Canaan is hidden for a while out of our sight. Babylonia has become a united kingdom with its capital and centre at Babylon. Khammurabi (B.C. 2356-2301) has succeeded in shaking off the suzerainty of Elam, in overthrowing his rival Eri-Aku, king of Larsa, with his Elamite allies, and in const.i.tuting himself sole monarch of Babylonia. His family seems to have been in part, if not wholly, of South Arabian extraction. Their names are Arabian rather than Babylonian, and the Babylonian scribes found a difficulty in transcribing them correctly. But once in the possession of the Babylonian throne, they became thoroughly national, and under Khammurabi the literary glories of the court of Sargon of Akkad revived once more.

Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, calls himself king of "the land of the Amorites." Babylonia, therefore, still claimed to be paramount in Palestine. Even the name of the king is an indication of his connection with the West. Neither of the elements of which it is composed belonged to the Babylonian language. The first of them, Ammi, was explained by the Babylonian philologists as meaning "a family," but it is more probable that it represents the name of a G.o.d. We find it in the proper names both of Southern and of Northwestern Arabia. The early Minsaean inscriptions of Southern Arabia contain names like Ammi-karib, Ammi-zadiqa, and Ammi-zaduq, the last of which is identical with that of Ammi-zaduq, the son and successor of Ammi-satana. The Egyptian Sinuhit, who in the time of the twelfth dynasty fled, like Moses, for his life from the court of the Pharaoh to the Kadmonites east of the Jordan, found protection among them at the hands of their chieftain Ammu-anshi.

The Ammonites themselves were the "sons of Ammi," and in numerous Hebrew names we find that of the G.o.d. Ammi-el, Ammi-nadab, and Ammi-shaddai are mentioned in the Old Testament, the a.s.syrian inscriptions tell us of Ammi-nadab the king of Ammon, and it is possible that even the name of Balaam, the Aramaean seer, may be compounded with that of the G.o.d. At all events, the city of Pethor from which he came was "by the river (Euphrates) of the land of the children of Ammo," for such is the literal rendering of the Hebrew words.

Ammi-satana was not the first of his line whose authority had been acknowledged in Palestine. The inscription in which he records the fact is but a confirmation of what had been long known to us from the Book of Genesis. There we read how Chedor-laomer, the king of Elam, with the three va.s.sal princes, Arioch of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidal of Goyyim invaded Canaan, and how the kings of the vale of Siddim with its pits of asphalt became their tributaries. For thirteen years they remained submissive and then rebelled. Thereupon the Babylonian army again marched to the west. Bashan and the eastern bank of the Jordan were subjugated, the Horites in Mount Seir were smitten, and the invaders then turned back through Kadesh-barnea, overthrowing the Amalekites and the Amorites on their way. Then came the battle in the vale of Siddim, which ended in the defeat of the Canaanites, the death of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrha, and the capture of abundant booty.

Among the prisoners was Lot, the nephew of Abram, and it was to effect his rescue that the patriarch armed his followers and started in pursuit of the conquerors. Near Damascus he overtook them, and falling upon them by night, recovered the spoil of Sodom as well as his "brother's son."

Arioch is the Eri-Aku of the cuneiform texts. In the old language of Chaldea the name signified "servant of the Moon-G.o.d." The king is well known to us from contemporaneous inscriptions. Besides the inscribed bricks which have come from the temple of the Moon-G.o.d which he enlarged in the city of Ur, there are numerous contract tablets that are dated in his reign. He tells us that he was the son of an Elamite, Kudur-Mabug, son of Simti-silkhak, and prince (or "father") of Yamut-bal on the borders of Elam and Babylonia. But this is not all. He further gives Kudur-Mabug the t.i.tle of "father of the Amorite land." What this t.i.tle exactly means it is difficult to say; one thing, however, is certain, Kudur-Mabug must have exercised some kind of power and authority in the distant West.

His name, too, is remarkable. Names compounded with Kudur, "a servant,"

were common in the Elamite language, the second element of the name being that of a deity, to whose worship the owner of it was dedicated.

Thus we have Kudur-Lagamar, "the servant of the G.o.d Lagamar,"

Kudur-Nakhkhunte, "the servant of Nakhkhunte." But Mabug was not an Elamite divinity. It was, on the contrary, a Mesopotamian deity from whom the town of Mabug near Carchemish, called Bambyke by the Greeks, and a.s.similated by the Arabs to their Membij, "a source," derived its name. Can it be from this Syrian deity that the father of Arioch received his name?

The capital of Arioch or Eri-Aku was Larsa, the city of the Sun-G.o.d, now called Senkereh. With the help of his Elamite kindred, he extended his power from thence over the greater part of Southern Babylonia. The old city of Ur, once the seat of the dominant dynasty of Chaldaean kings, formed part of his dominions; Nipur, now Niffer, fell into his hands like the seaport Eridu on the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf, and in one of his inscriptions he celebrates his conquest of "the ancient city of Erech." On the day of its capture he erected in grat.i.tude a temple to his G.o.d Ingirisa, "for the preservation of his life."

But the G.o.d did not protect him for ever. A time came when Khammurabi, king of Babylon, rose in revolt against the Elamite supremacy, and drove the Elamite forces out of the land. Eri-Aku was attacked and defeated, and his cities fell into the hands of the conqueror. Khammurabi became sole king of Babylonia, which from henceforth obeyed but a single sceptre.

Are we to see in the Amraphel of Genesis the Khammurabi of the cuneiform inscriptions? The difference in the names seems to make it impossible.

Moreover, Amraphel, we are told, was king of Shinar, and it is not certain that the Shinar of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis was that part of Babylonia of which Babylon was the capital. This, in fact, was the northern division of the country, and if we are to identify the Shinar of scripture with the Sumer of the monuments, as a.s.syriologists have agreed to do, Shinar would have been its southern half. It is true that in the later days of Hebrew history Shinar denoted the whole plain of Chaldaea, including the city of Babylon, but this may have been an extension of the meaning of the name similar to that of which Canaan is an instance.

Unless Sumer and Shinar are the same words, outside the Old Testament there is only one Shinar known to ancient geography. That was in Mesopotamia. The Greek geographers called it Singara (now Sinjar), an oasis in the midst of deserts, and formed by an isolated mountain tract abounding in springs. It is already mentioned in the annals of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III. In his thirty-third year (B.C. 1470), the king of Sangar sent him tribute consisting of lapis-lazuli "of Babylon," and of various objects carved out of it. From Sangar also horses were exported into Egypt, and in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, the king of Alasiya in Northern Syria writes to the Pharaoh,--"Do not set me with the king of the Hitt.i.tes and the king of Sankhar; whatever gifts they have sent to me I will restore to thee twofold." In hieroglyphic and cuneiform spelling, Sangar and Sankhar are the exact equivalents of the Hebrew Shinar.

How the name of Shinar came to be transferred from Mesopotamia to Babylonia is a puzzle. The Mesopotamian Shinar is nowhere near the Babylonian frontier. It lies in a straight line westward of Mosul and the ancient Nineveh, and not far from the banks of the Khabur. Can its application to Babylonia be due to a confusion between Sumer and Sangar?

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that the position of the kingdom of Amraphel is by no means so easily determined as has. .h.i.therto been supposed. It may be Sumer or Southern Babylonia; it may be Northern Babylonia with its capital Babylon; or again, it may be the Mesopotamian oasis of Sinjar. Until we find the name of Amraphel in the cuneiform texts it is impossible to attain certainty.

There is one fact, however, which seems to indicate that it really is either Sumer or Northern Babylonia that is meant. The narrative of Chedor-laomer's campaign begins with the words that it took place "in the time of Amraphel, king of Shinar." Chedor-laomer the Elamite was the leader of the expedition; he too was the suzerain lord of his allies; and nevertheless the campaign is dated, not in his reign, but in that of one of the subject kings. That the narrative has been taken from the Babylonian annals there is little room for doubt, and consequently it would follow from the dating that Amraphel was a Babylonian prince, perhaps that he was the ruler of the city which, from the days of Khammurabi onward, became the capital of the country. In that case we should have to find some way of explaining the difference between the Hebrew and the Babylonian forms of the royal name.