48 EEV. JOHN URQUHART, ON THE BEARING OF RECENT 



arrangement has till recently formed a difficulty. The ancient 

 inscriptions clearly indicated that the Elamites were Kassites or 

 Hamites, and not descendants of Shem. The Abrahamic history 

 itself implies that this was so, for the very name of Chedorlaomer, 

 the king of l^lam in Abraham's day, is Hamitic and not Semitic. 

 But the French discoveries atSusa have shown that a long Semitic 

 period preceded the Kassite or Hamitic period in Elam, and 

 that in Abra haul's time the supremacy had passed to a Hamitic 

 race. Here, then, we have the Scripture testimony to a fact 

 that could not have been a matter of common knowledge even 

 in the times of Moses, and that was certainly concealed from 

 after times. Going still further back, we find light shed upon 

 the very beginnings of human history, as recorded in the Bible. 

 " Cain," says Mr. Boscawen, " flees to the land of IsTod, eastward 

 from Eden (Gen. iv, 14). The passage now becomes clear in 

 the light which the monuments throw upon the beginnings of 

 Babylonian civilisation. The word Nod is the Nadu of the 

 inscriptions, that is, the land of the wanderers, the Manclu, or 

 ' barbarians,' the very region where we have seen the Babylonian 

 civilisation grow up."* Gen. iv, 16-21, clearly indicates that 

 ljuilding and other arts originated in the Cainite line, among 

 those very settlers in Nod. Another curious fact provides a 

 further commentary upon the statement that Cain named his 

 city after his first born son, Enoch (verse 17). That name 

 became the word for " city " in the most ancient civilisation 

 known to us. It is, says Boscawen, " the old Sumerian Umig 

 or Umtk, which passed into the Semitic Babylonian as Uruk 

 (Erech), the word for city and especially for the ancient capital 

 of Nimrod the city^ar excel lence."'\ 



In this brief review of nearly a century's labours, it has been 

 impossible to do more than call attention to a comparatively 

 small portion of their abundant results. But these suffice to 

 show how little such investigations have to be dreaded by the 

 Scripture. Indeed, it is not too much to say that, within the 

 sphere of genuine science which has concerned itself with 

 Scripture statements, there is to-day a higher appreciation of 

 the antiquity, veracity, and historic value of the Bible than 

 w^as to be found iu any previous time since the march of modern 

 science begun. 



DUM SFIRO, SPEEO. 



* The First of Empire^^^ p. 79. 

 + Ibid., p. 80. 



