COMING FROM THE EAST IN UR OF THE CHALDEES, HOME OF ABRAHAM AND HIS FAMILY

Nadene Goldfoot           
                                                                     

The yellow area shows the neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) empire
that continued till 600 BCE.  The brown area shows how large
the Babylonian Empire that existed since 1750 BCE was.  The
Babylonians had taken over the Assyrian Empire, and it was the
Assyrians who had attacked Israel and had taken away the best
of their people in 722-721 BCE.

Ur was an ancient town in the East, now in today's Iraq, found in the Chaldees of Babylonia but also known as Ur of  the Sumerians.   It may even have been of the Cassites/Kassites. 
                                                

 This was the home of Abraham ( b: 1948 BCE) and his father, Terah  and Terah's father, Nahor and family. Terah was also father to Nahor II and Haran. Haran died in Ur "Kasdim."  Abraham was called Abram in those days, and Sarah was Sarai.    He married Sarai and Nahor married Milcah, daughter of Haran.  Sarai remained barren.   
                                               

Terah, father of Abram

Abraham and Terah, along with Lot, Terah's grandson and Sarai and  left Ur and traveled with the goal of arrival in Canaan, but came first to the town of Haran.  Haran was Abraham's brother and the father of Lot.  He also lived in Ur with the family, but it was he who established this  trading town of NW Mesopotamia, which was the center of a moon cult.  Terah died in Haran in the year of 2083 BCE.  Isaac had been already born to Abram and was then 35.  Assyrian inscriptions from this time mention a Habiru(Hebrew) settlement in the vicinity which some scholars link with Abraham's father, Terah's residence there.  A small Jewish community was found living there in the 12th century still, by Benjamin of Tudela, scholar.  
                                                 

   

Chaldea with the Chaldeans were a Semitic tribe which migrated to Southern Babylonia and adopted the ancient Babylonian culture.  They were even further eastward.  Notice the empire stays along the Euphrates River. 
                                                 

When Abram was 75 years old, he left Haran with Sarai and Lot, all their wealth and people and traveled to the land of Canaan and went past Shechem until they came to the Plain of Moreh where they met up with Canaanites. There he was called "the Ivrim/ Hebrew." (Gen.14:13).  A Hebrew meant one who was a descendant of Eber, grandson of Shem, or one who comes from the other side of the Euphrates River.   He went on to the mountain east of Beth-el and pitched their tent situated with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and built an altar to G-d.  They then journeyed on, going toward the south.  
                                                    

Finally they entered Egypt due to a famine in Canaan. Abraham had an encounter there due to the beauty of Sarai, but overcame it and saw that this was not to be his future, so returned to Canaan, of which the land was higher up, no doubt a little cooler.  He was now traveling with his livestock, silver and gold.  Lot also had his flocks, cattle and tents, and so since they were both men and headstrong, Lot and Abram parted as their herdsmen kept fighting each other.  They were not alone here, for there were other people living here, the Canaanites and the Perizzites.  
                                                      

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in route

Lot went to the right to the plain of the Jordan River.  Abram lived in Canaan and Lot lived in the cities of the plain and pitched tents as far as Sodom.  

 The Babylonian Empire takes in the land to become Israel later.  They slowly gain power over the native inhabitants and gave their name to the entire area.  They made attempts, led by Merodach-Baladan, to overthrow Assyria, and finally did so in the 7th century BCE under their leader, Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar who established an empire extending from Assyria to the Egyptian border.  
                                                  

Nebuchadnezzar was King of Babylon from 605-562 BCE.  He won the battle over the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance at Carchemish in 605 BCE and then conquered all the lands from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian frontier which included Judah.  In 597, after Judah revolted, her sent contingents which captured Jerusalem and replaced the young king Jehoiachin with his own choice of Zedekiah, and exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon.  Thus our trip there.  

Eight years later, Zedekiah rebelled.  Nebuchadnezzar and his forces again invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem again in 586 BCE and destroyed the Temple, laying waste the cities and exiling masses of the population again.  The king was taken to Riblah where he was killed.  

This empire was conquered by the Persians in 539 BCE.  The fame of the Chaldeans as astrologers made the terms synonymous long after their empire had vanished.  The Aramaic language has been called Chaldaic or Chaldee, but this is a misnomer.  
                                               

Sumeria was a region of southern Babylonia named after a non-Semite people which migrated there in prehistoric times and founded a series of city-states.  The culture was the basis for the Babylonian civilization and influenced the Semitic people of Accad to their north.  Some early names of Sumerian cities are in the Bible, such as Nimrod and Cush which are connected with Sumerian tradition.  

Excavations in the ruins led by Sir Leonard Woodley in the 1920s and 30s revealed the highly civilized nature of the city in Abraham's time as well as showing evidence of an extensive flood at an earlier date.  He saw the Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq that was built over 4,000 years ago.  It is a huge huge huge edifice with steps going up and up the sides.  He dug up 35,000 artifacts.  

Now Iraq and American Archaeologist have been digging at Ur for 10 weeks supported by National Geographic,  and have found  a cuneiform tablet, one of many that have been found there.   
                                                    

"Ur emerged as a settlement more than 6,000 years ago and grew to prominence in the Early Bronze Age that began about a thousand years later. Some of the earliest known writing—called cuneiform—has been uncovered at Ur, including seals that mention the city. "   

Abraham and Terah lived there during the 2nd millennium BCE, at Ur's height in "2000 B.C., when Ur dominated southern Mesopotamia after the fall of the Akkadian Empire. "Akkad existed during the Babylonian period in the northern region of the valley between the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers, which contained Babylon, Sippar and other important cities. 
                                

               Akkad was the residence of Sargon the Great."  

The sprawling city of Ur was home to more than 60,000 people, and included quarters for foreigners as well as large factories producing wool clothes and carpets exported abroad. Traders from India and the Persian Gulf crowded the busy wharves, and caravans arrived regularly from what is now northern Iraq and Turkey."

Did they leave because Abraham wanted to leave such a culture of polytheism and start fresh with his wife and have room to allow his own thought on a G-d grow?  Quite possibly.  He would know his ideas couldn't thrive in Ur.  Besides that, he had the presence of
 G-d directing him into his travels.  
                                          

Abraham's faith was being tested when he was
asked by G-d to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but was
stopped in time, enough to see he was following
G-ds directions.

                     Human sacrifices surrounded an ancient Mesopotamian Tomb.  Eight human sacrifices were found at the entrance to this tomb, which held the remains of two 12-year-olds from ancient Mesopotamia. ... The team determined the age of six of the human sacrifices and found that the victims ranged in age from 11 to 20 years old.Jun 29, 2018.  About 5,000 years ago, the Mesopotamians buried two 12-year-olds — a boy and a girl — and surrounded their slender bodies with hundreds of bronze spearheads and what appears to be eight human sacrifices, a new study finds.  Abraham did live in the same area where human sacrifice was an every-day occurrence.   

A small clay mask unearthed represented Humbaba, a scary deity believed to protect the cedar forests of Lebanon.  It figures in the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh that was popular during Ur's height of culture around 2000 BCE.  

                

Below is the queen's Lyre found in the tomb at Ur.  The craftsmanship is remarkable.  A lyre is  musical instrument belonging to the family of harps, usually played in Greece.  Does this show trading going on?  Ur was a great town of trading.  

The Sumerians originally practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic deities representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world. The earliest Sumerian literature of the third millennium BCE identifies four primary deities: An, Enlil, Ninhursag, and Enki.

Another dig was done by a 6 member British team who worked with 4 Iraqi archaeologists to dig in the Tell Khaiber in the southern province of Thi Qar some 200 miles south of Baghdad.  War has kept international archaeologists away from Iraq. 

 The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millenniums, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy with the national god being the head of the pantheon.  Abraham was a real break-away from this concept to adhere to a single G-d force, unseen at that.  
                                             

In helping out Lot, his nephew, he had to fight against Chedorlaomer king of Elam, Amraphel, king of Shinar, and their allies.  When Sarah, his wife and niece died, he bought the cave of Machpelah for a family burial place.

Abraham was called a prophet, the founder of monotheism, the repository of all wisdom and science, the prototype of humility and kindness, famed for his hospitality.  He introduced circumcision as the covenant of Abraham our Father.  According to hellenistic legends much later on, he was even the king of Damascus.    
                                               

Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Enyclopedia
Tanach, the Stone Edition (Bible)
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/08/land-of-abrahams-father-aram-naharaim.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/03/160311-ur-iraq-trade-royal-cemetery-woolley-archaeology/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Cemetery_at_Ur
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0404/Home-of-Abraham-Ur-unearthed-by-archaeologists-in-Iraq
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1787272385367494897#editor/target=post;postID=1027589388625377276;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=0;src=link
https://www.livescience.com/62954-human-sacrifices-mesopotamia.html#:~:text=Eight%20human%20sacrifices%20were%20found,year%2Dolds%20from%20ancient%20Mesopotamia.&text=The%20team%20determined%20the%20age,11%20to%2020%20years%20old.