112 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
the south-east. For at Haran he left his father’s house with 
Lot, and not in “ Ur of the Chaldees,” as it is shown by 
future allusions to Abraham’s country. In the 4th verse of 
the 24th chapter of Genesis, Abraham unmistakably looks upon 
the country of Nahor as his own, and as that part of Mesopo- 
tamia is called variably in Holy Writ Padan-Aram and Aram- 
Nahraim there cannot be the least doubt that Southern 
Babylonia could ever have been his native country, as it 
was not in what was known to the Hebrews as Aram. 
Had “ Ur of the Chaldees” been situated near the junction 
of the Euphrates and the Tigris, 200 miles below Babylon, 
Terah could have travelled about 300 miles along the 
Euphrates, through fertile and richly cultivated country as 
far as Heet, the ancient Is, and then branched off at a con- 
venient spot for the Land of Promise, without the necessity of 
going about 400 miles northward out of his way, seemg that 
we are not told that he had had any particular object for 
doing so. 
As for the idea that, because a certain word pronounced 
Uru or Uri has been found in an inscription discovered at a 
mound called Mokayir or Mogayir, in Southern Babylonia, 
we are to conclude that it meant “ Ur of the Chaldees,” from 
where Terah migrated, nothing can be more misleading. 
For in the first place no Assyrian scholar can definitely 
declare that the etymology of both is derived from the same 
source; and, secondly, that this Babylonian Uri was really 
the Hebrew D™WD WS “Aor Cashdcem.” It is not at all 
improbable that the fact of Abraham’s Aor being called “ of 
the Chaldees,” or the “ Chaldees Aor,” there must have been 
another Aor in existence, just like saying Richmond of 
Surrey and Richmond of Yorkshire, or Kingston of England 
and Kingston of Ireland.* 
* In asking Mr. Theophilus Pinches again for his opinion about the 
word Ur or Uru he replied as follows: “ I do not think that it is neces- 
sary that this Uru [Moogayir] should be the same as the Hebrew 9) 3X, 
As you know, I have already, in a note to one of your papers (Babylonian 
Cites), read before the “ Victoria Institute,” put forward the theory that 
Ur of the Chaldees was Akkad, that district being called Uru or Uri in 
Akkadian. It seemed to me that Ur of the Chaldees must have been so 
called to distinguish it from some other Ur. Now I hold that Ur= 43, 
was neither in Akkad nor in Chaldea. Ancient Chaldea was the district 
immediately to the south of the city of Babylon. Delitzsch, in his map 
attached to Wo lag das Paradies ? makes KaSdu (= Chaldea) to be imme- 
diately to the north (or, rather, north-west) of Ur, but he sprawls the 
