Solomon is said to have founded Tadmor in the Desert for the extensive trade from the Euphrates, by Damascus to Jerusalem, whence the rich stuffs and spices from India were conveyed. Later on, Nebuchadnezzer established the port of Teredon, on the Persian Gulf, for the commerce brought from the southern seas destined for the great waterways, the Tigris and Euphrates, northwards. These facts are comparatively modern history to Gudea and his days, when the waters of the Persian Gulf washed the shores at Eridu, while ships from India, Ceylon and the different trading ports on the Red Sea unloaded their cargoes on the docks of the great maritime city of Ur of the Chaldees. The city of Ur, then not far from the mouth of the Euphrates, was situated upon its western shores, and was at this time, and later, a city of great commercial and political importance, and the first capital of the kings of all Chaldea. As in all maritime cities trading with distant countries, people of various nationalities were gathered here. It is not improbable that the name of “Ur of the Chaldees” may have reference to certain families of foreign stock, the “Kaldai” or “Kaldi” who inhabited the regions round and about Ur, perhaps nomadic tribes from Arabia. Other authorities, however, speak of these “Kaldai” as a priest class, magicians and astrologers, possessing strange learning and speaking a peculiar language; as representatives also of the primitive inhabitants of the country, filling a sacred office and consulted by the king on all religious subjects. The divinity of this city was Hurki, or Sin, the great Moon God, and here may be seen at the present day on the mounds of Mugheir the remains of an ancient temple dedicated to this deity, rising to the height of seventy feet above the plain. This was founded by Urukh, or Ur Gur, one of the earliest known of the kings of united Sumir, who exercised dominion over the greater portion of southern Mesopotamia. The remains of temples built by him are found in all the larger of the ancient cities of this region and the enormous proportions of these and their number have won for him the name of “The Builder.” It is evident that this king had at his command vast resources in human skill and industry. The Bowariyeh mound at Warka is described as two hundred feet square and one hundred feet high and that above thirty million bricks must have gone into its construction. Other structures on a similar scale, the remains of which are found at Erech, Larsa, Calneh, Ur, Nippur and other cities in this region, show the magnitude of his resources and the extent of his authority. These buildings are, for the most part, temples dedicated to the tutelar divinity of each special locality, as at Larsa, where he erected a temple to the Sun God, and at Calneh to Belus.