Chaldea - Tapa blanda

Excerpt: ...also of foreign traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi. 31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter does not admit of more than guesses