120 
in an interesting monograph by M. Oppert, and also by Mr. 
Fox-Talbot and Mr. Boscawen in the Transactions of the 
Society of Biblical Archaeology. “There is,” says Mr. Fox- 
Talbot, “ a fine inscription not yet fully translated, describing 
the soul in heaven, clothed in a white radiant garment, seated 
in the company of the blessed, and fed by the gods them- 
selves with celestial food.” * 
30. Those who are at all versed in Egyptian lore will 
recognize the clear similarity of these dogmata with those of 
common origin (as I believe) carried to the Nile at a very 
early period of migration, and there elaborated by the mystical 
genius of that intellectual and most religious people. 
31. By all this teaching and belief the boy Abram must 
have been surrounded in his father’s house at Ur of the 
Chaldees. As to the name Chaldee, it was the designation of 
a people of Southern Babylonia, f and the name Ivhaldi in 
the Burbur ( i.e . Accadian) dialect (as Prof. Rawlin son informs 
us), represents the moon-god. But the Hebrew name Casdim 
seems to be formed from the verb “ Casadu,” to possess ; in 
Assyrian, “ Casidu ” will be the nomen agentis, says Mr. Sayce 
in his first Assyrian Grammar. J Thus the Casdim would be 
the possessors, the lords of the land, and not the subject 
race. [The Elamite conquerors of the land. — Mr. Boscawen.'] 
32. I have shown as in a rough sketch the main points of 
the position occupied by the house of Terach, and that it was 
not as a “simple shepherd” that Abram was brought up, but 
in the central and most complex civilization that the world 
then knew, “ the cradle of Semitic civilization,” as Dr. Birch 
has called it, “ highly civilized and densely populated at a 
time when Egypt was still in its youthful prime.” Abram 
knew what the world was, and was conversant with its ways 
before he was called out of his father’s house ; and by the 
guidance of Jehovah he followed the stream of the varied 
migrations of illustrious races, and his tent-pegs were every- 
where struck into ground already rich with the harvest of 
the past, and broadcast with the seed of the world’s future 
destiny. 
* Records, iii. 135. “Since translated by me, T. S. B. A., vol. iv.” — 
Mr. Boscawen. 
t Rawlinson’s Her., i. 256, 538, and iv. 206. Note by Rev. A. H. Sayce. 
Khaldi was the supreme god of the Alarodian inscriptions of Van, which 
have not yet been deciphered. The Minni had nothing to do with the 
Accadians, and the supposition that Armenia, like Accad, was ever called 
Burbur, “ the Summits,” is incorrect, 
f p. 14. 
