=25. The recent discoveries in Chaldæa= and the surrounding countries show that the names of these four kings――Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, are names which have in large part been found on the tablets and in the history of the countries mentioned. Amraphel is the same in the Hebrew as Amarphal, and it was so translated in the Septuagint made more than 250 B. C. This name was that of a viceroy of Sumir, the district around and south of Babylon, called Shinar in Genesis, and the name Amar-pal has been found “borne by private persons on two cylinders of ancient workmanship” (Lenormant). The Septuagint has for Tidal, Thargal, which seems to be the proper spelling; the difference between the two spellings in the original Hebrew is only that between an _r_ and a _d_, which in that language is exceedingly small. In the Akkadian (same as Accadian), which was the language used in the ancient Chaldæan times, Turgal meant “great chief.”[53] This king was chief of a people called the Gutium in the monumental inscriptions, and this tribe or small nation has been identified with the Goim of the Hebrew text, which in our English version is translated “nations.” So that the “Tidal king of nations,” of the text in Genesis, is shown to be the “great chief” of a tribe living in Northern Babylonia, of which one part became afterwards the nation of the Assyrians.[54] Chedorlaomer, the monuments show us, was truly an Elamite name, Chedor, or Kudur, forming part of several names of the early kings of that district, and Laomer, or Lagamar, being the name of a most important Elamite god. The name Arioch is very similar to that of the son of an Elamite king who was king of Larsa, which itself is similar to the Hebrew name Ellasar, and the circumstances have led the best Assyriologists to believe that they are the very same. =26. The monumental records show= that this king of Elam, on a previous occasion, when Abram was still at Haran, had passed over the Euphrates and conquered Phœnicia and a country to the south. He is called both king of Elam and king of Phœnicia, as the land of Canaan was called by name “Martu,” “the land of the setting sun,” or Phœnicia. So that 14 years before, at the time when Chedorlaomer crossed the Euphrates on his first expedition, Abram may have beheld the troops of that king whom he afterward conquered, with his viceroys, when they came on their second invasion of Canaan. At that time Abram was with his father Terah at Haran, as we may see from the dates in the context, Gen. 16:3; 14:5. THE ISHMAELITES.