At the same time they did not lose, at least not in Mesopotamia, which was already half Semitized, certain Bedawi ideas and instincts, which would profoundly affect their later history. Of these the most important historically was a religious idea which, for want of a better term, may be called Super-Monotheism. Often found rooted in wandering peoples and apt long to survive their nomadic phase, it consists in a belief that, however many tribal and local gods there may be, one paramount deity exists who is not only singular and indivisible but dwells in one spot, alone on earth. His dwelling may be changed by a movement of his people _en masse_, but by nothing less; and he can have no real rival in supreme power. The fact that the paramount Father-God of the Semites came through that migration _en masse_ to take up his residence in Babylon and in no other city of the wide lands newly occupied, caused this city to retain for many centuries, despite social and political changes, a predominant position not unlike that to be held by Holy Rome from the Dark Ages to modern times. Secondly the Arabs brought with them their immemorial instinct of restlessness. This habit also is apt to persist in a settled society, finding satisfaction in annual recourse to tent or hut life and in annual predatory excursions. The custom of the razzia or summer raid, which is still obligatory in Arabia on all men of vigour and spirit, was held in equal honour by the ancient Semitic world. Undertaken as a matter of course, whether on provocation or not, it was the origin and constant spring of those annual marches to the frontiers, of which royal Assyrian monuments vaingloriously tell us, to the exclusion of almost all other information. Chederlaomer, Amraphel and the other three kings were fulfilling their annual obligation in the Jordan valley when Hebrew tradition believed that they met with Abraham; and if, as seems agreed, Amraphel was Hammurabi himself, that tradition proves the custom of the razzia well established under the First Babylonian Dynasty.