ORIENTAL DISCOVEKIES ON OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. -i7 



The entire history of Abraham has been confirmed in similar 

 fashion. He is said to have come from Ur in Chaldea. Now 

 it might have happened that Ur had come into existence only 

 after 2000 B.C., the time of Abraham. Or it might have been 

 fomided earlier and by Abraham's time have ceased to be 

 inhabited. Was Ur, then, in existence in the days of 

 Hammurabi and of Abraham ? The answer of oriental research 

 is that it was. But Abraham clearly belongs to a Hebrew- 

 speaking community. Was there such a community in the 

 Abrahamic Ur ? The reply again is a decided affirmative. 

 There was, and there had been for some centuries, such a colony 

 in that Babylonian city. The very name Abram (Abramu) is 

 found upon an earlier monument, and was possibly that of an 

 ancestor of the patriarch. Abraham, we are told, goes down to 

 Egypt, and finds that it is then open to strangers. That was 

 ■quite contrary to learned belief, which informed us that it was 

 not till tlie seventh century B.C. that foreigners were allowed 

 to have free access to Egypt. But we now know that in this 

 matter learned opinion was wrong, and that the Scripture shows 

 us the country as it then was. The famous fourteenth chapter 

 ■of Genesis must not be omitted in this connection. There 

 certain sovereigns of Abraham's time are named as associated 

 in the invasion of Palestine. Among them is Hammurabi 

 himself (Amraphel), who is serving under Chederlaomer, the 

 King of Elam. This supremacy of Elam was a fact, and the 

 men named were all of them personages of the period. 



It is remarkable that oriental discovery has also enabled us 

 to detect the historic accent in the Scripture narrative of still 

 •earlier times. Hilprecht speaks of the " enormous sandhills " 

 in various districts of Babylonia, and adds, " These heaps were 

 known to the ancient Babylonians by the name of Tul Ahuba 

 (mounds of the Deluge)."* The memory of the Deluge not 

 ■only lived on in ancient Babylonia, but had also acquired a 

 distinct place in its historic records. " The Deluge," writes 

 Boscawen, " forms a dividing line between the mythic age and 

 the beginning of history ; and to both Chaldean and Hebrew 

 writers it was a real event, for in a list of royal names in the 

 British Museum we read, " These are the kings after the Deluge 

 (abubi), who according to their relative order wrote not."t In 

 the account of the settlement of th(; nations after the Delucre, 

 Elam is classed among the Shemites (Gen. x, 22). That 



^ Explo7'ations in Bible Lands ^ p. 41. 

 t The First of Empires, p. 66. 



