The distance from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran in northern Mesopotamia was considerable, but it lay along the line of the river and by the common route of travel. It is remarkable that Haran, like Ur, was a city of the Moon-god, who appears at one time to have taken primary rank among the Babylonians. Nabonidos restored the temple at Haran, and it is thus that he celebrates the event:--“May the gods who dwell in heaven and earth approach the house of Sin, the father who created them. As for me, Nabonidos, king of Babylon, the completer of this temple, may Sin, the king of the gods of heaven and earth, in the lifting up of his kindly eyes, with joy look upon me month by month at noon and sunset: may he grant me favourable tokens, may he lengthen my days, may he extend my years, may he establish my reign, may he overcome my foes, may he slay my enemies, may he sweep away my opponents. May Nin-gal, the mother of the mighty gods, in the presence of Sin, her loved one, speak like a mother. May Samas and Istar, the bright offspring of his heart, to Sin, the father who begat them, speak of blessing. May Nuzku, the messenger supreme, hearken to my prayer and plead for me.” There would seem to be as much reason for Abraham to leave Haran as there was for his leaving Ur; and the Bible actually represents the stay in Haran as only a stage in the migration. Canaan was the land which God had “told him of;” and there, building altars successively at Shechem and Bethel and in the oak-grove of Mamre, he realized that the Lord could be approached in every place by those who worshipped in spirit and in truth. Terah and Abraham had come out of Chaldea with a large family and numerous following. “For years,” says Ragozin, “the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to pasture, over the land of Canaan, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham’s herdsmen and Lot’s, when Lot chose the Plain of the Jordan and Abraham remained in the centre of the country. After the battle of four kings against five, in the Vale of Siddim, when Lot was taken prisoner, Abraham pursued the victorious army, now carelessly marching homewards, with its long train of captives and booty, and produced a panic among them by a sudden and vigorous onslaught. Not only was Lot rescued, with his women folk and his goods, but all the captured goods and people were brought back too. Chedorlaomer, of whom the spirited Bible narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200 B.C. In the cuneiform inscriptions he is called Khudur-Lagamar; and among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those dim ages, he is the second with any flesh and blood reality about him, probably the first, conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record.”