Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH 12:1-20
which the Old Testament continued to refer for several
centuries, (Cf. Gen. 1Y:20, Num. 13:29, Josh. 3:10, 1
Ki. 11:1, 2 IG. 7:6, 2 Chron. 1:17),
The Hyksos have been described as a motley horde
bent solely on conquest and looting. They invaded Egypt
about 1800 (or 1700?) B,C, and kept control of the coun-
try until about 1J70 B.C., when they were driven out
and chased into Palestine by the Pharaohs of the 18th
Dynasty. Several of the Palestinian cities were destroyed
during the sixteenth century, and the Hyksos type of
fortifications which have been excavated at Megiddo,
Shechem, and Lachish, furnish evidence of the savage
intensity of these campaigns.
The last great empires of the Fertile Crescent were,
of course, those which followed the migrations described
in the foreging paragraphs; hence, their history does not
have too much relevance to that of the Patriarchal Age.
These were, in the order named, the Assyrian, Chaldean
(late Babylonian) , Persian, and Macedonian (the short-
lived empire of Alexander the Great). The Roman Empire
was the last and most extensive and most powerful, having
extended its rule over the entire Fertile Crescent, including
North Africa, Egypt, and the whole of the Near East and
Mesopotamia.
The departure of Abram from Ur is correlated in
time with the Third Dynasty (the most powerful) of that
city. The exact location of the original site has long been
a matter of debate. The Moslems traditionally have identi-
fied it with Urfa, a city in Upper Mesopotamia near Haran
(the Greeks called it Edessa) , The location which com-
monly has been identified with Abram’s Ur is in Southern
Mesopotamia some 160 miles from the present head of the
Persian Gulf. This identification originated in the late
nineteenth century when so many references to Ur were
found in the inscriptions which were numerous and wide-
spread throughout the Mesopotamian area. The discoveries
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