In passing, therefore, from Babylonia to Canaan, Abraham was but passing from one part of the Babylonian empire to another. He was not migrating into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. The road he traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and civil officials, by Babylonians making their way to Canaan, and by Canaanites intending to settle in Babylonia for the sake of trade. Harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a Babylonian name, and its great temple of the Moon-god had been founded by Babylonian princes after the model of the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the birthplace of the patriarch. Even in Canaan itself the deities of Babylonia were worshipped or identified with the native gods. Anu the god of the sky, Rimmon the god of the air, Nebo the interpreter and prophet of Bel-Merodach, were all adored in Palestine, and their names were preserved to later times in the geography of the country. Even Ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to be merged, was of Babylonian origin. Abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of Babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. The fact is an important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the credibility of the narratives contained in the Book of Genesis. Written and contemporaneous history in Babylonia went back to an age long anterior to that of Abraham--his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the decline of the Babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to himself and his posterity. His birth in Ur, his migration to Harran and Palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all that we are told of his relationship to Lot or to the tribes of north-western Arabia. In Canaan, however, Abraham was but a sojourner. Though he came there as a Babylonian prince, as an ally of its Amoritish chieftains, as a leader of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a Babylonian army, his only possession in it was the burial-place of Machpelah. Here, in the close neighbourhood of the later Hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock for the purposes of burial. The sepulchre of Machpelah was the sole possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his descendants.