e
Babylonian system of writing was taught and learned, Babylonian
literature was studied, Babylonian trade was carried on, and Babylonian
law was in force. From time to time Syria and Canaan had obeyed the rule
of the Babylonian kings, and been formed into a Babylonian province. In
fact, Babylonian rule did not come to an end in the west till after the
death of Abraham; Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, entitles himself
king of "the land of the Amorites," as Palestine was called by the
Babylonians, and his fourth successor still gives himself the same
title. The loss of Canaan and the fall of the Babylonian empire seem to
have been due to the conquest of Babylon by a tribe of Elamite
mountaineers.

The Babylonians of Abraham's age were Semites, and the language they
spoke was not more dissimilar from Canaanitish or Hebrew than Italian is
from Spanish. But the population of the country had not always been of
the Semitic stock. Its first settlers--those who had founded its cities,
who had invented the cuneiform system of writing and originated its
culture--were of a wholly different race, and spoke an agglutinative
language which had no resemblance to that of the Semites. They had,
however, been conquered and their culture absorbed by the Semitic
Babylonians and Assyrians of later history, and the civilisation and
culture which had spread throughout western Asia was a Semitic
modification and development of the older culture of Chaldaea. Its
elements, indeed, were foreign, but long before it had been communicated
to the nations of the west it had become almost completely Semitic in
character. The Babylonian conquerors of Canaan were Semites, and the art
and trade, the law and literature they brought with them were Semitic
also.

In passing, therefore, from Babylonia to Canaan, Abraham was but passing
from one part of the Babylonian empire to another. He was not migrating
into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike
unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. The road he
traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and
civil officials, by Babylonians making their way to Canaan, and by
Canaanites intending to settle in Babylonia for the sake of trade.
Harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a Babylonian name, and its
great temple of the Moon-god had been founded by Babylonian princes
after the model of the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the birthplace