120 ME. BOSCAWEN ON THE HISTORICAL 



To conclude this paper^ we may tlius sum up the evidence 

 of the monuments. From the earliest period^ as remote as 

 B.C. 3750^ we have inscriptions to prove the existence of a 

 Semitic population in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, The 

 inscriptions found at Larsa^ which relate to the trade and 

 commerce of these people, show them to have spoken a lan- 

 guage closely akin to the Hebrew_, and to have borne personal 

 names similar to those of the early Hebrew patriarchs. In 

 religion, though not monotheists, they certainly had a purer 

 creed than their Turanian- Akkadian fellow-countrymen, and 

 at the head of the Pantheon was the supreme god, Ilu, or El_, 

 whose name, like that of EI and Jehovah, entered into the 

 composition of many personal names. In the year B.C. 2280 

 Chaldea was invaded by the Elamites, and a dynasty of 

 Elamite kings established, of which Kudur-Mabug and 

 Eriaku or Arioch were members. The fall of this dynasty, 

 caused by the defeat of Kudur-Mabug and Eriaku by 

 Khammurabi in B.C. 2120 would seem to synchronise very 

 Avell with the defeat of Chedorlaomer, recorded in Genesis xiv. 

 The migration of Abram must, therefore, fall within this period 

 of 160 years. The monuments show that at this period such 

 an alliance of Mesopotamian kings as that recorded in Genesis 

 xiv. was most probable, and contemporary inscriptions of the 

 kings of Larsa, Guti or Goim, and Elam are now in the 

 British Museum. The invasion of Chaldea by the Elamites, 

 and the conquest of Syria by these kings, synchronises very 

 well with the date of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, the 

 period when Abram would have entered Egypt under the 

 most favourable circumstances. 



The invasion of Chaldea and the conquest of Ur, Erech, 

 and Babylon by Elamites would press more severely on the 

 Semitic than non-Semitic population, and force them to 

 migrate northward. 



The close religious affinity between the worship of the 

 temple at Ur and that of Harran would render the migration 

 of this people from one city to the other most probable. 



All these points taken together tend to show that the 

 evidence of the Chaldean monuments indicates that the record 

 of the migration of Abram as recorded in the book of Genesis 

 is in perfect agreement with the state of Chaldean and 

 Western Asiatic history revealed to us by these monuments. 



