were deputed to look after the interests of the settlers from the West also acted when one of the parties was a native of Babylonia.[20] The migration of Terah and his family thus ceases to be an isolated and unexplained fact. In the age to which it belonged Canaan and Babylonia were in close connection one with the other. Babylonian kings claimed rule over Canaan, and Canaanitish merchants were established in Babylonia. The language of Canaan was heard in the Babylonian cities, and even the rulers of the land were of foreign blood. Between Babylonia and Canaan there was a highway which had been trodden for generations, and along which soldiers and civil officials, merchants and messengers, passed frequently to and fro. Midway, on a tributary of the river Belikh, was the city of Harran, so called from a Sumerian word which signified ‘a high-road.’ Its name pointed to a Babylonian foundation, as did also its temple dedicated to the Babylonian moon-god. The temple, in fact, counted among its founders and restorers a long line of Babylonian and Assyrian kings, and almost the last act of the Babylonian Empire was the restoration of the ancient shrine. Merodach, the god of Babylon, came in a dream to the last of the Babylonian monarchs, and bade him raise once more from its ruins the sanctuary of his brother-god. And Nabonidos tells us how he performed the task laid upon him, how he disinterred the memorial-stones of the older Assyrian kings, and how ‘by the art of the god Laban, the lord of foundations and brickwork, with silver and gold and precious stones, with spices and cedarwood,’ he built again Ê-Khulkhul, ‘the temple of rejoicing.’ The moon-god, Sin, who was adored within it, was known throughout the Aramaic lands of Northern Syria as Baal-Kharran, ‘the Lord of Harran.’ But there was another city of the moon-god besides Harran. This was Ur in Babylonia. In Babylonian literature it is commonly known as the city of Sin. Between Ur and Harran there must have been some close connection, and it may be that Harran owed its foundation to the kings of Ur. At all events, there was good reason why an emigrant from Ur should establish his abode in Harran. Both cities were under the same divine patron, and that meant, in the ancient world, that both lived the same religious and civil life. Harran obeyed the rule of the Babylonian kings; its very name showed that it was of Babylonian origin, and its culture was that of Babylonia. Law and religion, manners and customs, all were alike in Harran and Ur. The migration from the one city to the other did not differ from a change of dwelling from London to Edinburgh.