116 ME, BOSCAWEN ON THE HISTOKICAL 



also, " Arise, go to Padan-Aram, to tlie house of Betliuel, tliy 

 mother's father; and take a wife from thence o£ the daughters 

 to Laban, thy mother's brother" (xxviii. 2). " And Jacob went 

 out from Beersheba and went toward Haran, and in that 

 journey he passed through Bethel " (xxviii. 10, 19). A still 

 more important reference as to the locality is that relative to 

 the flight of Jacob — " And Jacob stole away unawares to 

 Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not he fled. So he fled 

 with all that he had, and he rose and he passed over the river, ^ 

 and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead. And it was 

 told Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled. And he 

 took his brethren with him and pursued after him seven days, 

 and he overtook him in the mou.ntain of Grilead (Gen. xxxi. 

 21-23). Later references are in the message of Sennacherib 

 to Hezekiah. " Have the gods of the nations delivered 

 them which my fathers have destroyed — Gozan, Haran, and 

 the children of Eden, which were inTelassar?" (2 Kings xix. 

 12). And in the resume of the commerce of Tyi-e (Ezek. 

 xxvii. 23), Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, and the traffickers 

 of Sheba,t Ashur, and Chilmad. la these extracts we find 

 Haran definitely placed on the east side of the Euphrates, 

 and in the neighbourhood of Gozan and Assyria. The land 

 of Gozan was the Gil-za-nuJ or Guzanu of the inscriptions, 

 the province watered by the Khabur and the Belikh ; while 

 the land of Eden here is the Adini of the same records, 

 and was situated in the same region. Charan therefore lay in 

 the basin of the Khabur and Behk, and its site corresponds to 

 the modern town of Haran, the Charrte of the Eomans, on a 

 small tributary of the Belikh. 



Of the ancient connexion between Kharran and Chaldea 

 we have much evidence. In the first place, the name 

 ^4^ ^^yy */-, KHAR-KA-NU, is not Semitic, being a derivation 

 from the Akkadian khaeran " A road.'-* In a bihngual 

 vocabulaiy this word Kharran is given as an equivalent of the 

 Assyrian words Daragu and Meti.'c, the one the equivalent of 

 the Hebrew *TJ1"7, "A way or road," the latter, a participial 

 derivation from pHi?, '' To transfer," means of transfer, or 

 road. Kliarranu is also an ideographic meaning of the sign 

 ^, the ancient form of which was y^, representing two cross 

 roads. It was, therefore, a city which derived its name from 



* For the use of "in:, "the river," for the Euphrates, compare 

 Exod. xxxiii. 31, where the borders of the future kingdom are given ; also 

 ]saiah vii. 20, and the contrast in Jer. ii. 18 between the Nile and the 

 Euphrates ; also Micah vii. 12, &c. 



t The Wady Saba near Anah, on the Euphrates. 



X The Black Obelisk and W.A.I., v. C9, the land of Gu-za-ni. 



