own the Euphrates from Barsip near Carchemish,
gold-dust came from Melukhkha, the "salt" desert to the east of Egypt
which the Old Testament calls Havilah; copper was conveyed from the
north of Arabia, limestone from the Lebanon ("the mountains of
Tidanum"), and another kind of stone from Subsalla in the mountains of
the Amorite land. Before beams of wood and blocks of stone could thus be
brought from the distant West, it was necessary that trade between
Babylonia and the countries of the Mediterranean should have long been
organized, that the roads throughout Western Asia should have been good
and numerous, and that Babylonian influence should have been extended
far and wide. The conquests of Sargon and Naram-Sin had borne fruit in
the commerce that had followed upon them.

Once more the curtain falls, and Canaan is hidden for a while out of our
sight. Babylonia has become a united kingdom with its capital and centre
at Babylon. Khammurabi (B.C. 2356-2301) has succeeded in shaking off the
suzerainty of Elam, in overthrowing his rival Eri-Aku, king of Larsa,
with his Elamite allies, and in constituting himself sole monarch of
Babylonia. His family seems to have been in part, if not wholly, of
South Arabian extraction. Their names are Arabian rather than
Babylonian, and the Babylonian scribes found a difficulty in
transcribing them correctly. But once in the possession of the
Babylonian throne, they became thoroughly national, and under Khammurabi
the literary glories of the court of Sargon of Akkad revived once more.

Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, calls himself king of
"the land of the Amorites." Babylonia, therefore, still claimed to be
paramount in Palestine. Even the name of the king is an indication of
his connection with the West. Neither of the elements of which it is
composed belonged to the Babylonian language. The first of them, Ammi,
was explained by the Babylonian philologists as meaning "a family," but
it is more probable that it represents the name of a god. We find it in
the proper names both of Southern and of Northwestern Arabia. The early
Minsaean inscriptions of Southern Arabia contain names like Ammi-karib,
Ammi-zadiqa, and Ammi-zaduq, the last of which is identical with that of
Ammi-zaduq, the son and successor of Ammi-satana. The Egyptian Sinuhit,
who in the time of the twelfth dynasty fled, like Moses, for his life
from the court of the Pharaoh to the Kadmonites east of the Jordan,