, and that
this was their extreme limit to the south?

There were other names by which Palestine and Syria were known to the
early Babylonians, besides the general title of "the land of the
Amorites." One of these was Tidanum or Tidnum; another was Sanir or
Shenir. There was yet another, the reading of which is uncertain, though
it may be Khidhi or Titi.

Mr. Boscawen has pointed out a coincidence that is at least worthy of
attention. The first Babylonian monarch who penetrated into the
peninsula of Sinai bore a name compounded with that of the Moon-god,
which thus bears witness to a special veneration for that deity. Now the
name of Mount Sinai is similarly derived from that of the Babylonian
Moon-god Sin. It was the high place where the god must have been adored
from early times under his Babylonian name. It thus points to Babylonian
influence, if not to the presence of Babylonians on the spot. Can it
have been that the mountain whereon the God of Israel afterwards
revealed Himself to Moses was dedicated to the Moon-god of Babylon by
Naram-Sin the Chaldaen conqueror?

If such indeed were the case, it would have been more than two thousand
years before the Israelitish exodus. Nabonidos, the last king of the
later Babylonian empire, who had a fancy for antiquarian exploration,
tells us that Naram-Sin reigned 3200 years before his own time, and
therefore about 3750 B.C. The date, startlingly early as it seems to be,
is indirectly confirmed by other evidence, and Assyriologists
consequently have come to accept it as approximately correct.

How long Syria remained a part of the empire of Sargon of Akkad we do
not know. But it must have been long enough for the elements of
Babylonian culture to be introduced into it. The small stone cylinders
used by the Babylonians for sealing their clay documents thus became
known to the peoples of the West. More than one has been found in Syria
and Cyprus which go back to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin, while there
are numerous others which are more or less barbarous attempts on the
part of the natives to imitate the Babylonian originals. But the
imitations prove that with the fall of Sargon's empire the use of
seal-cylinders in Syria, and consequently of documents for sealing, did
not disappear. That knowledge of writing, which was a characteristic of
Babylonian civilization, must have been carried with it to the shores of
the Mediterranean.

The seal-cylinders were engraved, som