EVIDENCE.S or THE MIGKATIUN OF AUK'AM. 101 



governed in the south and east of the country ; but being a more 

 visrorous ruler and warrior he defeated their forces and made 

 himself ruler of the whole of Babylonia." Mr. George Smith 

 was of the same opinion in his Assyrian Discoveries, p. 233, 

 and so is Professor Sayce {Fresh LiyJits from the Monuments, 

 p. 47). Mr. Smith has very cleai'ly proved that the names 



-j^r -m HT, -M 4-ir m-^]i and ^yr<r ^^ v^ ^r-^ ^:ryr, 



reading Erini or Eri-Aku, Kim-Aku, and Rim-Agu were all 

 the name of the same king {Notes on Bahi/loniaii and 

 Assyrian History). Turning now to the Hebrew records we 

 read that shortly after the migration of Abram to Canaan, a 

 very important event in Western Asiatic history took place — 

 namely, the invasion of the land of the west, that is Syria, by 

 a confederation of Mesopotamian kings, headed by Chcdor- 

 laomer. King of Elam (Gen. xiv.). The passage is so 

 remarkable, even in its wording, that it must be quoted in 

 full. " And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel, Kiug of 

 Shinar, Arioch, King of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer, King of Elam 

 and Tidal, (Sept.) Targal, King of Nations (Goim) that they 

 made war with the Kings of the plain of the Dead Sea;" and 

 again, " Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and the 

 thirteenth they rebelled. And in the fourteenth came 

 Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him." The 

 historical character of this passage is not to be doubted, 

 and so great an authority as Ewald thus writes, "In the 

 oldest extant record of Abram (Gen. xiv.) we see him in 

 the clear light of history, the separate I'ays of which were 

 nearly all gathered in focus, and we only lament that its 

 brevity does not allow us to collect many more such rays, 

 and from them to form a connected history of this hero of the 

 remotest past." * 



Now let us apply this valuable fragment to the monumental 

 history we have collected, and we shall find it productive of 

 some very important results. 



The name Eriaku could only be written in Hebrew 

 characters as *ry"l''")t^ Arioch, and would correspond to the 



name of the King of Elassar, a name which closely re- 

 sembles the name of Larsa, the city of which Eriaku Avas 

 King. The father of Eriaku was Kudur-Mabug, Kiug of 

 Elam, and in his inscriptions he claims the title of Adda Maktu, 

 literally, father of the land of the Setting Sun, a title which 

 is equivalent to the Assyrian Sar Ahharri, " King of Syria," 

 the very title which Chedorlaomer must have assumed during 

 his fourteen years' rule over the land of Southern Palestine. 



* Schriider, Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament on Gen. xiv. 1. 



