So renowned was the place as a centre of heathen worship, that at a comparatively late date—running far into the Christian era, namely, the fifth century a.d.—the worship of heathen deities was still in full progress there, though the god Sin had fallen, to all appearance, somewhat into the background, and [pg 203] Bel-shamin, “the lord of the heavens,” i.e. the Sun-god, generally known as Shamash or Samas, and called later on by the Greek name of Helios, had taken his place. They also worshipped a goddess called Gadlat, generally identified with the Babylonian goddess Gula, and Atargatis, the feminine counterpart of Hadad, whose name is often found in Aramean inscriptions under the form of 'Atar-'ata.[40] This goddess is called Derketo[41] by Ktesias, and appears as Tar-'ata in Syriac and in the Talmud. According to Baethgen, Atargatis, or, better, Attargatis, was a double divinity, composed of Ištar and 'Ata or 'Atta (Attes). In consequence of the worship of the sun, the moon, and the planet Venus ('Atar = Ištar), a second centre of the worship denominated Sabean (which originated in south-west Arabia, the country of the Sabeans) was founded in Haran, where its devotees are said to have had a chapel dedicated to Abraham, whose renown had, to all appearance, brought to his memory the great honour of deification.
It was after a long sojourn at Haran that Abraham set out for his journey westwards, the patriarch being no less than seventy-five years old when he left that city. The next episode in his life was his journey, in obedience to the call which he had received, to Canaan, going first to Shechem, “unto the oak (terebinth) of Moreh,” afterwards to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and thence, later, towards the south. A famine caused him to continue his travels as far as Egypt, where the incident of Sarai being taken from him, in consequence of the deceit practised by him in describing her as his sister, took place.
This portion of the patriarch's history is not one which can be very easily dealt with, the incident being [pg 204] told very shortly, and no Egyptian names being given—in fact, it is altogether destitute of “local colouring” necessarily so, from the brevity of the narrative.
At Haran, the patriarch and the members of his family probably saw people to a great extent of the type to which they had been accustomed in Babylonia, but in the land of Canaan they would notice some difference, though they all spoke a Semitic language, like themselves. Indeed, it is not at all improbable that wherever the ancestor of the Hebrews went, he found the Semitic Babylonian language at least understood, for as the Babylonian king claimed dominion over all this tract as far as the Mediterranean, the language of his country was fast becoming what it certainly was a few hundred years later, namely, the lingua franca of the whole tract as far as Egypt, where also, to all appearance, Abraham and his wife had no difficulty in making themselves understood.
According to Gen. x. 6, Canaan, into whose country Abraham journeyed with the object of settling, was the descendant of Cush, and the inhabitants ought therefore to have spoken a Hamitic language. Historically, however, this cannot be proved, but it is certain that if the Canaanites spoke a Hamitic language, they soon changed it for the speech which they seem to have used as far back as history can go, this speech being closely akin to Hebrew. In fact, there is very little doubt that Abraham and his descendants, forsaking their mother-tongue, the language of Babylonia, adopted the dialect of the Canaanitish language, which they afterwards spoke, and which is so well known at the present day as Hebrew. To all appearance Abraham's relatives, who remained in Mesopotamia, in “the city of Nahor,” spoke a dialect of Aramaic, a language with which Abraham himself must have been acquainted, and which may have been spoken in Babylonia at that early date, as it certainly was, together with Chaldean, later on.
It is noteworthy, that the country to which Abraham migrated, and which is called by the Hebrew writers Canaan, is called by the same name in the Tel-el-Amarna letters, and the fact that the Babylonian king Burra-buriaš uses the same term shows that it was the usual name in that part of the world. Among the Babylonians, however, it was called mât Amurrî, “the land of Amoria,” the common expression, among the Babylonians and the Assyrians, for “the West.” In later times the Assyrians designated this district mât Ḫatti, “the land of Heth,” the home of the Hittites. The inference from this naturally is, that at the time when the Babylonians became acquainted with the country, the Amorites were the most powerful nationality there, whilst the Hittites had the dominion, and were in greater force later on, when the Assyrians first traded or warred there. These two linguistic usages show, that the two great races in the country, both of them Hamitic, according to Gen. x. 15, 16, were the Amorites (who spread as far as Babylonia, and even had settlements there), and the Hittites, whose capital was Ḫattu (Pterium, now Boghaz-keui) in Asia Minor, and whose rule extended south as far as Carchemish and Hamath.
In addition to the above indications from the historical inscriptions of Assyria, and the contract-tablets of Babylonia belonging to the first dynasty of Babylon (a number of which are translated in Chap. V.), we have also the indications furnished by the bilingual geographical lists.
As these lists are of great importance for the geography of the ancient Semitic East, with special reference to Western Asia, it may be of interest, and perhaps also serve a useful purpose, to give, in the form in which they occur on the tablets, such portions as may bear on the question of the knowledge of the Babylonians of the countries which lay around them.
The most important of these geographical documents [pg 206] is that published in the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. ii. p. 50. This text begins, as would be expected from the hand of a patriotic scribe, with the towns and cities of his own land, in two columns, Akkadian, and the Semitic equivalent. This was followed, in the same way, by the provinces of his country, ending with the two principal, Kengi-Ura, translated by Šumer and Akkad. This is followed by the four Akkadian groups for the land of Subartum and Gutium, probably a part of Media.
To all appearance a new section begins here, the scribe introducing in this place the four Akkadian words or groups for “mountain.” The text then proceeds as follows—