The name ‘Hebrew’ comes from a root which means ‘to pass’ or ‘cross over.’ It has been variously explained as ‘a pilgrim,’ ‘a dweller on the other side,’ ‘a crosser of the river.’ But the second explanation is that which best harmonises with philological probabilities. We find other derivatives from the same root. Among them is Abarim, the name of that mountain-range of Moab on ‘the other side’ of the Jordan, from whence Moses beheld the Promised Land (Numb. xxvii. 12), as well as Ebronah, near the Gulf of Aqaba, one of the resting-places of the children of Israel (Numb. xxxiii. 34). Hebrew genealogists indeed seem to have connected the name with that of the patriarch Eber. But this is in accordance with that spirit of Semitic idiom which throws geography and ethnology into a genealogical form. It is probable that the name of the patriarch is merely the Babylonian _ebar_, ‘a priest,’ which is met with in Babylonian contracts of the age of Abraham. Professor Hommel, however, supplementing a suggestion of Dr. Glaser, has recently drawn attention to certain facts which throw light on the early use of the name ‘Hebrew,’ even if they do not remove all the difficulties connected with it.[8] A Minæan inscription from the south of Arabia, in which the name of ’Ammi-zadoq occurs, couples together the countries of Misr or Egypt, of Aashur, the Ashshurim of Gen. xxv. 3, and of ’Ibr Naharân, ‘the land beyond the river.’ In another Minæan inscription of the same age, the name of ’Ibr Naharân is replaced by that of Gaza. It is clear, therefore, that in ’Ibr Naharân we must see the south of Palestine. But the Minæan texts are not alone in their use of the term. A broken Assyrian tablet from the library of Nineveh[9] also refers to Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the river,’ in Canaan, and associates it with Beth-el, Tyre, and Jeshimon. Professor Hommel is probably right in assigning the inscription to the reign of Assur-bel-Kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1080). At all events, the name seems to be of Babylonian origin, like most of the geographical expressions adopted by the Assyrians, and it is consequently very possible that Ebir-nâri primarily signified the country on the western bank of the Euphrates, where Ur was situated, and that it was subsequently extended to the country west of the Jordan when Syria became a province of the Babylonian empire.[10]