ographer reproduced an
authentic fact from the chronicles of Babylon, and connected
it with one of the events in the life of Abraham. The very
late date generally assigned to Gen. xiv. in no way
diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated
by the Chaldaean document which is preserved to us in the
pages of the Hebrew book.

In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the
Dead Sea--Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboim, and Bela--revolted against
him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldaea,
Arioch of Ellasar,* Tida'lo the Guti, and marched with them to the
confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes
then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes.
They are represented as being giants--Rephalm; men of prodigious
strength--Zuzim; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of
speech--Zamzummim; as formidable monsters**--Emim or Anakim, before
whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horim who were
encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites
who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar
defeated them one after another--the Rephaim near to Ashtaroth-Karnaim,
the Zuzim near Ham,**** the Amim at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horim
on the spurs of Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing
his footsteps, he entered the country of the Amalekites by way of
En-mishpat, and pillaged the Amorites of Hazazon-Tamar.

* Ellasar has been identified with Larsa since the
researches of Rawlin-son and Norris; the Goim, over whom
Tidal was king, with the Guti.

** Sayce considers Zuzim and Zamzummim to be two readings of
the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the
original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew
alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the
Chaldaean syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or
Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the
true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of
this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as
any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the
word as Z-m-z-m or as Z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it
_Zuzim,_ others preferred _Zamzummim._

*** _Numb._ xiii. 33.

**** In Deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the Zamzummim lived
in th