Ancient Babylon Research Paper

In at least one branch of their descendants the Semitic peoples of Babylonia still live. Ancient Babylon has disappeared, and its land has become a waste, inhabited by a feeble folk bearing little or no kinship to the mighty race of earth's first empire builders. But the Hebrews of today are the living tree that has sprung from that marvelous root of Babylonian culture, character, and religion.

To the Hebrews, our modern world is indebted for the germ of its religious thought, the realization of the one almighty Power enfolding the universe, "the all-wise and the all-loving too." This thought, though not in its full clearness, the Hebrews carried with them in their departure from Babylonia. They carried also the Babylonian shrewdness at trade, and keenness at figures, and, as a less valuable inheritance, an instinctive leaning towards the unclean ritual of Ishtar, the nature goddess, or love goddess, of ancient Summer.
Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew race, was a Semite, dwelling, as the Bible tells us, in the city of "Ur of the Chaldees." This may mean either the great Sumerian city of Ur, or a particular suburb of Babylon which had the same name.
In the latter case, which is the one that recent research makes more probable, Abraham's own eyes and those of his kinsfolk rested often and familiarly on the sights of the great metropolis in the days of Sumu-abi and the first powerful Semitic kings. Amid these surroundings there came to the patriarch the impulse, God-given as are all high impulses, to leave the oppressive civilization for a freer, purer
life.

Under what material influence Abraham set out on his wanderings, we do not know; but his migration corresponds closely in time with the tremendously destructive Elamite invasion of Babylonia by Kudur-nankhundi. Those ravaging hordes of Elamites must have driven forth many a desolated Babylonian household in search of some more quiet dwelling place. The influence of the devastation would be specially strong with the nomadic tribes, like that of Abraham. These, gathering the rescued fragments of their flocks and herds, wandered onward until they could find rest in less dangerous pasture lands. Abraham's tribe journeyed first to Haran, which was probably the city of that name near the upper Euphrates, and thence Abraham led his own particular following into Canaan, which we know as Palestine. He found this land most charming to his taste, perfectly fitted to his pastoral household. It was sparsely inhabited, fertile with many meadows, and of a pleasant climate. Here, when he learned that the Elamite forces were again at hand, persecuting him even in this distant realm, he turned upon them suddenly and fiercely, as we know, and defeated the army of Chedorlaomer. Or, if we are not justified in terming that sudden nigh-attack a defeat, the patriarch at least wrested from the invaders such portions of their prisoners and spoils as specially concerned him.