The fact that Eri-Aku's mother's name was Rim-Sin has some suggestiveness. His father, Kudur-Mabug, seems to have married a princess of Ur. Her name, Rim-Nannar, means servant of Nannar, Nannar being the name of the moon-god of Ur. But Sin was the peculiarly Semitic name of the moon-god, and especially the name prev alent in Harran, where Abraham stopped in his Tourney from Ur to Palestine, and where there was a famous temple of Sin. The fact that Kudur-Mabug, with his Mongol name, gave a purely Semitic name to Rim-Sin, his son, shows how thoroughly the rulers of Babylonia had be come Semitized.
I have said that Eri-Aku was the last king of Larsa. Up to the time of the conquest of Ham murabi hit reign had been a successful one. He seems at ne time to have ruled over the whole of South r n Babylonia, for we hear of his ex tending his power as far as the river Tigris in the east, and across the Euphrates as far as Ur on the west. He ruled Nipper or Nipur as well as Larsa, and made a successful attack on Erech, and even approached nearly to Babylon on the north.
But he represented the foreign dynasty of Elam, which had for two or three centuries held Baby lonia in subjection, and although considerably Semitized, yet the Babylonian Semites were ready to throw off the Elamite yoke; and Hammurabi, king of Babylon, making that city his new capital, conquered the whole of the country, overthrew all the vassals of Elam, and became the founder of a strong native dynasty. This dynasty lasted a few centuries, until a new Elamite or Kassite invasion again conquered Babylonia and set up another new dynasty.
A curious record of these successive Elamite invasions exists in this country. About 275o B. C. the ruler of a city in Southern Babylonia dedi cated an agate temple to Ishtar, "for the life of Dungi, the powerful champion, king of Ur." Some five hundred years later, probably about 2285 B. C., when the great Elamite King, Kudur Nahunti, made the conquest of Babylonia,this tab let was carried, with the image of the goddess, to Elam, and there kept for a thousand years, until about 13oo B. C. King Kurigalzu brought it back to Nipper or Nipur, and presented it to his god dess, Beltis.
There it remained, covered up with the ruins of the city, for more than three thousand years, until the University of Pennsylvania sent an expedition to excavate the old mound of Nipur, when it was found there with the inscriptions which tell the story, and it is now in the University Museum at Philadelphia.
It is one of those witnesses, miraculously pre served, of a history supposed to be utterly lost.
It certainly is amazing that when Genesis tells us simply that one Arioch, king of Ellasar, was a member of an expedition that invaded Palestine in the time of Abraham, we can dig up the cities of Babylonia and learn who he was, who were his father and mother and grandfather, how long he reigned, and what were the chief events in his career, and how his kingdom, and the dynasty which he represented, came to an end.
See Arioch, King of Ellasar, by William Hayes Ward, D. D. "Light en Scriptural Tests from Recent Discoveries. '--Homiletic Review.
2. A captain in Nebuchadnezzar's bodyguard (Dan. ii:t4, 25), B. C. 604.