It is a curious thing about these Semites, who at a very early date came in and took possession of all Babylonia, that though they apparently came from Arabia and the south, they made their first appearance in history in the north of Babylonia. How that happened we cannot tell. Perhaps some records of a southern invasion have been lost. Or they may have skirted round on the eastern side. It is all guess-work. They appeared in the north, and they quickly overran the country--not only of Babylonia, but of Palestine and of Syria also--except, it may be, a strip of Syria along the Mediterranean shore which is called on the map Phœnicia. That is an exception which you will do well to bear in mind. It is important, because these Phœnicians belonged to one of the greatest civilisations of the old world, and because they too were great makers of history, as you shall see before very long. [Sidenote: "Ur of the Chaldees"] On their western border, therefore, the people of the powerful empire which began to be formed along the Tigris and Euphrates had tribes very closely akin to themselves. On the east and on the north they had neighbours of a different race from their own. It seems to have been in the south of Babylonia, near the outgoing of the great rivers, that the first capital of the empire was formed. Probably this southern Babylonia is that "Ur of the Chaldees" from which we are told that Abraham came and established himself in Palestine. He came, as we see, living with {56} his family and his dependants in tents, with flocks and herds, easily moving on from one place to another when the sheep or oxen had eaten the grass or when water failed. He was the patriarch (_pater_=father, and _arch_=ruler), the father-ruler of the small tribe or large family that came with him. In your history books you will sometimes read that "society was in the patriarchal stage." That means that the people of whom the historian is writing were living in the way in which Abraham and his dependent people lived; and we may be sure that it was the way of life of the greater number of those Semites who came up from Arabia and took possession of Syria and Palestine at a very early date. They took possession of the country of Babylonia also, and as they settled along the fertile river-banks we may imagine that they would begin to unite together into a nation and become strong, with a feeling of union, in a way that it was not at all likely that the small tribes of patriarchs and their families, moving about with their flocks and herds, would unite. So the Babylonians and the Syrians and the dwellers in Palestine would easily fall into the way of regarding each other as of different nations, although really they were of the same race.