NAHOR, CITY OF.
To Biblical students, Haran is best known as the city of Nahor, the designation which it re ceives in Gcn. xxiv :to. It was the city where Abraham's brother Nahor lived with his son Laban, where Terah and Abraham made their home after they left the land of the Chaldees, where Terah died, and whence Abraham was called to go into Canaan. As the city of Abra ham's sojourn. it has interest by no means sec ond to Ur of the Chaldces. Assyrian studies have given great interest to this country. and Schrader, Hommel, Delitzsch and Winckler have, during the last few years, devoted much investigation to this region. A paper on Haran, published this year by the latter scholar, is especially im portant.
Haran is called Charran in the Sentuagint, and Harran with the rough H in the Babylonian in scriptions. It was evidently an important place commercially, as its hieroglyph is made by two roads crossing, implying that it was the crossing place of two caravan routes. It was the chief city of what was called Mesopotamia, not so much because it lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, as because it was included in the an gle between the two rivers, Euphrates and Habor, the principal affluent of the Euphrates. In its widest extent Mesopotamia did not include the whole of the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates, only this northern, or rather middle part, while the southern part was Babylonia, and we might call Padan-Aram, North Mesopotamia.
We are apt to think of Nineveh and Babylon as the two great capitals of the East, and to sup pose that in old times there were no great king doms but the two of vvhich they were the cap itals. This is a great mistake. Assyria was of im portance only for some six or eight hundred years, before and after which it did not exist, nor did its capital city. We now know that, for at least a thousand years before there was any Nineveh, Harran, a more correct form than Haran, was one of the most powerful capitals of the East.
The oldest capital of Southern Babylonia was Ur. Its age goes back perhaps 4000 years B. C. It was nearly or quite 4000 B. C. when the South ern Babylonian power arose, and it extended its power and culture all the way to the Phcenician Coast. Seals belonging to this chiliad have been
found even in Cyprus. The astrological tablets ascribed to the ancient Sargas I, whose date is put at 3800 B. C., mention the lands of the West and distinctly refer to Harran. Cedar wood was rafted down the Euphrates in the time of Gudea, about 35oo B. C., brought from the region of Mount Lebanon or Amanus.
From its own monuments we know nothing of the history of Mesopotamia, and its chief city, Harran. None of the mounds in this region have as yet been excavated; what we know of these important sites is wholly from the records of the neighboring kingdoms.
From these we learn that the title "Kings of the World," the favorite designation of the kings of Assyria, was first assumed by the kings of Harran and adopted by Raminan-Niraril, about 1400 B. C. on his conquest of what had been the much more powerful kingdom whose capital was Harran. This was a chiliad of great importance in eastern history. It was between zoo° and moo B. C. that the Kassites conquered and held Babylonia, that the Hittites and the Aramians took possession of Syria, that the Assyrian empire was estab lished, and that the Egyptians made their great campaigns in Asia. It was in the latter part of this period that Assyria finally conquered the earlier kingdom of Mesopotamia and took Har ran.
To Sin, the moon god of Harran, the Assyrians gave the second place of honor in their pantheon, next after their own god, Assur. This shows the influence of Harran and the honor in which it was held.
When Shalmaneser II (Soo B. C.) wished to restore the kingdom of Assyria to the power it had held soo years before under Shalmaneser I, he rebuilt the temple of Sin at Harran, regard ing it as a royal city. A curious illustration of the honor in which Harran was held is supplied by an inscription of the time of Assur-bani-pal, the last great king of Assyria. A scribe, Marduk sum-usser, writes to the king: "When the father of the king, my lord, made an expedition into Egypt, he went to the temple in Harran, built of cedar wood. Sin was sitting on his throne with his head bowed. Two royal crowns were on his head. Nuskii waited upon him. The father of the king, my lord, entered in.