Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/378

 There would seem to be as much reason for Abraham to leave Haran as there was for his leaving Ur; and the Bible actually represents the stay in Haran as only a stage in the migration. Canaan was the land which God had "told him of;" and there, building altars successively at Shechem and Bethel and in the oak-grove of Mamre, he realized that the Lord could be approached in every place by those who worshipped in spirit and in truth.

Terah and Abraham had come out of Chaldea with a large family and numerous following. "For years," says Ragozin, "the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to pasture, over the land of Canaan, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, when Lot chose the Plain of the Jordan and Abraham remained in the centre of the country. After the battle of four kings against five, in the Vale of Siddim, when Lot was taken prisoner, Abraham pursued the victorious army, now carelessly marching homewards, with its long train of captives and booty, and produced a panic among them by a sudden and vigorous onslaught. Not only was Lot rescued, with his women folk and his goods, but all the captured goods and people were brought back too. Chedorlaomer, of whom the spirited Bible narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200 In the cuneiform inscriptions he is called Khudur-Lagamar; and among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those dim ages, he is the second with any flesh and blood reality about him, probably the first, conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record."

It is supposed that the "Amraphel, king of Shinar," who marched with Khudur-Lagamar as his ally, was no other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read Amarpal, while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, Eri-