¹ J.R.A.S. XII, 481 Google Scholar.

² For a divergent tradition, of equal antiquity, taking the city of Abraham as being in South Babylonia, see Pinches, T. G., Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (1902 edn.), IV, 836 Google Scholar.

³ For a succinct account see Pinches, T. G., Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (1902 edn.), IV, 855-7Google Scholar. It is understood that a new edition of this valuable dictionary is in preparation, in which presumably Pinches' article will be superseded.

⁴ E.g. Parrot, A., “Ur en Chaldée,” patrie d'Abraham, (The Evangelical Quarterly, 1933, 89–99)Google Scholar.

⁵ Inter alia Ur of the Chaldees (1929), passim; Abraham (1936), 57–63 Google Scholar; Excavations at Ur (Ernest Benn Ltd., 1954), 128 Google Scholar.

⁶ J.N.E.S. XVII (1958) 28–31 Google Scholar; Professor Gordon's view is already quoted as accepted doctrine in ibid., 252.

⁷ J.N.E.S. XVII, 31 Google Scholar.

⁸ There is a current fashion of using the term “semi-nomad” with reference to the patriarchs, to avoid the suggestion that one is thinking of them as Bedu. There has certainly been a real distinction between the two groups in modern times: Bell, Gertrude, The Letters (Lady Richmond's edition, Pelican Books, 1953), 159 Google Scholar, says: “Now the Shammar are Bedu; only the Shammar and Anazeh are real Bedawin, the others are just Arabs. … They [the Bedu] never cultivate the soil or stay more than a night or two in one place, but wander ceaselessly over the inner desert.” However, in the absence of reference in the Old Testament to pure Bedu, there seems no point in complicating terminology by insisting on this distinction.

⁹ B.D.B. 409.

¹⁰ Lev. xviii. 9, 11; Ezek. xvi. 4.

¹¹ J.N.E.S. XVII, 30 Google Scholar.

¹² Sir Leonard Woolley made the further point that in antiquity the Euphrates flowed west of Ur, so that the city itself was, from the viewpoint of Palestine, “beyond the River”; see Abraham, 63.

^12a Hereinafter abbreviated to P.R.U.

¹³ Gordon makes no suggestion as to the geographical position of Hittite Ura, except that it must be north or east of Haran, and does not say if he would identify it with the Ura (a frontier fortress of the land of Azzi) mentioned by Mursilis II (1339–1306 B.C.) and now considered to be about 200 miles due north of Haran; see Garstang, J. and Gurney, O. R., The Geography of the Hittite Empire, 37, 39 and map 1Google Scholar. For the position of the land of Azzi see also Goetze, A., Kleinasien (1957), p. 190 and mapGoogle Scholar. Nougayrol, J., Comptes rendus de l'académie des inscriptions et des belles lettres (1954), 242, n. 2Google Scholar, has already rejected such an identification.

¹⁴ Professor Gordon may be considered to have gone beyond his facts in claiming that “Ura was a city whose men specialised in tamkarutum ‘foreign trade’, the métier of the tamkarum ‘merchant’” and in speaking (twice) of the “many merchants” of Ura. In fact, apart from the general reference to them in the text laying down trading conditions, thirteen are mentioned, ten as witnesses in contracts and the other three, who were no more than minor agents as they are described as “servants of Šitnabuti,” in connection with lost property. Professor Gordon may be correct by inspiration, but his statement cannot be substantiated by texts so far available.

¹⁵ There is no need to assume with Gordon (op. cit. 29) that the merchants were kept on the move “as a means of preventing excessive exploitation.” They were in fact royal agents, as the description applied to four of them—(amet)tamkarû ša (d)šamši ( P.R.U. IV, p. 190, text 17.316Google Scholar) shows. Hattusilis' primary objection to their settling was probably that he would thereby lose the services of persons important to the Hittite economy.

¹⁶ P.R.U. III, p. 20, text 15.63, lines 21–4Google Scholar.

¹⁷ P.R.U. III, p. 80, text 16.239, lines 23–4Google Scholar.

¹⁸ At the time of the Assyrian colony in Kanesh, copper was the chief export from Asia Minor, donkey caravans of up to five tons being mentioned; see Orientalia XXI, 421, n. 3 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ P.R.U. III, p. 185, ll. 25–34Google Scholar; p. 186, 11. 35–40; p. 187, text 15.43, ll. 1–3. For the possible mention of iron see Schaeffer, C. F. A., P.R.U. II, xxxvi Google Scholar. Iron in the form of an axe-blade has been found; see Ugaritica I, 109ffGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Syria XIII, 2 Google Scholar; XIX, 317. For bronze and copper; objects see references listed in Ugaritica I, 230 Google Scholar, ‘Bronze’ and 239, ‘Cuivre’.

²¹ The mention of camels at this time has been widely assumed to be an anachronism. See, however, Forbes, , Studies in Ancient Technology, II, 197 Google Scholar.

²² Gen. xii. 16; xiii. 2, xxiv. 35; xxxii. 14.

²³ Gen. xiv. 14.

²⁴ Professor Gordon attempts to cover this point by arguing (op. cit. 29) that Abraham went to Palestine, “a sort of no-man's land,” for “freedom of opportunity” and “at the same time … had to secure the interests of his household and of his kinsmen by maintaining his own militia and by forming alliances with local Amorite chieftains.” Abraham thus becomes, in Gordon's eyes, a rebel against state-socialism and the first exponent of private enterprise. This does not solve the difficulty. A tamkaru must have obtained materials for trading from some base and could neither have remained outside the urban areas indefinitely nor been permitted to wander in their vicinity accompanied by a standing army.

²⁵ Gen. xiii. 5–8.

²⁶ See Guillaume, A., Prophecy and Divination (1938), 66-7Google Scholar. See also Bell, Gertrude, The Letters (Lady Richmond's edition, Pelican Books, 1953), 232 Google Scholar: “It is curious to find how many of the Bag[h]dad notables are tribesmen, often only settled in the town for the last generation or two. … Any sheikh with business in the town looks by right to his kinsman's house for entertainment in the matter of daily meals … and if a member of the town family gets into trouble he will seek sanctuary with the tribe.”

²⁷ Gen. xxiv. 10.

²⁸ Gen. xix. 2–3.

²⁹ Gen. xxi. 34.

³⁰ Gen. xxii. 19.

³¹ B.A.S.O.R. No. 129 (02 1953), pp. 15–18 Google Scholar. The argument in this article (referred to by Gordon, op. cit., p. 29, n. 5), which supposes that Abraham was legally free under Hittite law to buy a fief, is hardly compatible with Gordon's view that Abraham went into “Palestine a sort of no-man's land” (op. cit., p. 29) because under Hittite law he was not free to acquire land.

³² See C.A.H. III 39 f., 47–50 Google Scholar.

³³ E.g. the reference to “Philistines” in Gen. xxi. 34; xxvi. 1.

³⁴ Professor Gordon does not base any argument on the anachronism.

³⁵ Isa. xxxix. 1–7.

³⁶ Simons, J., The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (1959), p. 18 Google Scholar, finds a difficulty, saying that in Isa. xxiii. 13” C[asdim] is probably not authentic and the first half of this verse is in any case unintelligible.” (The difficulty lies in explaining the syntax of a demonstrative particle; see Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley, , Hebrew Grammar, §136d, note 2Google Scholar).

³⁷ The Century Bible, Isaiah i-xxxix, 264-5Google Scholar.

³⁸ J.N.E.S. XVII, 30 Google Scholar. The statement is (as far as is known at present) untrue. A. Goetze says categorically ( Kleinasien (1957), 191, n. 6Google Scholar): “Die Inschriften kennen nur einen Gott Ḫaldi” and remarks: “Man kann nur bedauern, dass F. W. König die Bezeichnungen “Chalder” und “chaldisch” wieder aufnimmt”.

³⁹ Hebrew kasdim represents Akkadian kaldū because the original form is *kašdu and in some dialects of Akkadian (see G.A.G. §30g) -š- becomes -l-before a dental. There is no such phonetic change in Urarṭian, where the group -št- is very common (see Friedrich, J., Einführung ins Urarṭäische, pp. 3, 4 Google Scholar et passim): thus -Id- is original in ḫald- and there is no reason why, if the word were used in Hebrew, this group should become -sd-. Furthermore, the initial phoneme in ḫald-, though predominantly represented as ḫ-, is occasionally represented both in Urarṭian and Assyrian as a- (see Iraq XX, Pt. 2, p. 197, final noteGoogle Scholar). This suggests that the initial phoneme was nearer to h- (cf. G.A.G. §24 a): it seems impossible to explain why such a phoneme should have been represented in Hebrew by k-. As to the Χαλδαῖοι mentioned by Xenophon in Armenia, Neriglissar is now known to have undertaken campaigns in Cilicia (see Wiseman, , Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings, 39–42 Google Scholar), whilst Nabuna’id attached great importance to the control of Harran ( V.A.B. IV, pp. 218 ffGoogle Scholar., Nabonid Nr. 1, Col. I, lines 19–49), so that it would not be surprising to find the descendants of Kaldu colonists at strategic points in the north in the fourth century B.C. Ancient colonists could retain their racial identities over very long periods. Jewish inhabitants, plausibly explained as the descendants of colonists left by Nabuna’id, were found a millennium later in the very oases in Arabia in which Nabuna’id, who is known to have used levies from the west, spent his ten years self-imposed exile from Babylon; see Gadd, C. J., Anatolian Studies VIII, 85 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ L.A.R. I, §§783, 792, 810, 811 Google Scholar. Iraq XVII, Pt. 1, p. 39 Google Scholar, letter VIII, rev. 11′-14′.

⁴¹ L.A.R. I, §783 Google Scholar.

⁴² L.A.R. I, §§783, 810 Google Scholar.

⁴³ The exact date is not yet established. My suggestion ( Iraq XVII, Pt. 2, p. 150 Google Scholar) that it was just before rather than just after 734 B.C. goes beyond the evidence.

⁴⁴ Iraq, XVII, Pt. 2, p. 127, letter XII, lines 5–20Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Iraq XVII, Pt. 2, p. 127, letter XII, lines 23–7Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Isa. xxiii. 5.

⁴⁷ Professor Gordon is not quite explicit about this, but his reference to Ḫald-being “one of the ancient designations of Armenia/Urarṭu” (op. cit., 30) is pointless if this is not the implication.

⁴⁸ The capital itself was not taken.

⁴⁹ L.A.R. II, §§25, 55 Google Scholar. See also Iraq XX, Pt. 2, pp. 204-5Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ See Schmökel, H., Geschichte des alten Vorderasien 1957), 267 Google Scholar.

⁵¹ On this question see most recently Tadmor, H., J.C.S. XII, 97, n. 311 Google Scholar.

⁵² L.A.R. II, §§50, 62, 193-5Google Scholar. See also Tadmor, H., J.C.S. XII, 95 Google Scholar.

⁵³ See Iraq XX, Pt. 2, pp. 204-5Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Gen. xxv. 20; xxviii. 5.

⁵⁵ Gen. xxxi. 20, 24.

⁵⁶ Simons, J., The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, pp. 9–10 Google Scholar, points out that one expects an eponymous ancestor representing Babylonia to be present in the table in Gen. x. 22, and accepts the old etymology (see B.D.B. 75) by which Arpachshad is taken to fill this role.