94 MR. BOSCAWEN ON THE HISTORICAL 



5. — That while Abram journeyed still further to Canaan 

 (Gen. xii. 5), the rest of the family of Terah remained 

 in Kharran and established a colony there (Gen. 

 xxiv. 10-15; xxix. 4). 

 6. — That at the "time of the leaving of Chaldea, or 

 shortly after, that country was ruled by a con- 

 federation of Mesopotamian tribes ; at the head of 

 which was the King of Elam (Gen. xiv.). 

 With these points before us, therefore, we turn to the 

 monuments and inscriptions from Chaldea. The most ancient 

 inscriptions of the land are the work of the ancient Akkadians, 

 or mountaineers, who had come down from the mountains of 

 the East to the plains of Chaldea, and brought with them the 

 germs of civilisation and the first elements of the Cuneiform 

 writing. A record of this migration is preserved in the 

 Hebrew writings : '' And it came to pass as they journeyed 

 in the East, they found a plain, in the land of Shinar and 

 dwelt there " (Gen. xi. 2). Turning to the Cuneiform inscrip- 

 tions, we meet with a most emphatic endorsement of this 

 statement, both in tradition and legend, and by evidence of a 

 still more solid character. In the legends and traditions of 

 the earliest inhabitants of Chaldea, as preserved in the Deluge 

 Tablet, and in the hymns and Magical litanies, we find all 

 the traditions of origin centre round the " Mountain of the 

 East,'' the " Mountain of the World," the " Mountain of the 

 Nations," to which evidently reference is made by the Prophet 

 Isaiah (xiv. 13) : "I will sit upon the Mountain of Congrega- 

 tion in the uttermost parts of the North"* (E.V.). That 

 these people were the inventors of the Cuneiform mode of 

 writing is shown by an examination of the characters 

 composing the syllabary. The Cuneiform writing, like the 

 Egyptian and Hittite characters, was originally pictorial, and 

 we can see in these characters — that is, in the more primitive 

 forms — a picture of the home and surroundings of the people 

 who invented them. The pictures would be derived from the 

 objects around, as an Esquimaux would draw a reindeer, but 

 not a lion ; a bear, but not a tiger ; fir-trees, but not palms. 

 So, when we turn to this ancient series of pre-historic sketches 

 placed before us in the earliest forms of the Cuneiform 

 characters, we at once see that they must have been depicted 

 in a locality different from Chaldea — a more northern and 

 mountainous one. 



* The arrangement of the cardinal points in Chaldea was not in true 

 correspondence with the magnetic points,N.,N.W.,S.,S.E.,E.,N.E.,W.,S.W. 

 The writer, therefore, refers here to the north-east in the expression 

 north. 



