The Land of Shinar

Extract

And Cush begat Nimrod. . . . He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah.

Years ago it was my good fortune to visit a high ecclesiastical dignitary of one of the strange sects of the Middle East, who received us after the ancient fashion and even provided water for us to wash our feet, although the distance between his house and the Residency where I was staying was a matter of a few hundred yards. After a formal conversation we began to discuss interesting matters, and he told me a good deal of the life of the Bedouins of the desert east of the mountains of Moab. After some talk he suddenly stopped, and said : ‘Why should I describe all this to you? You will find it in much better perspective in Genesis; for, after all, the richer Sheikhs live a life which is exactly like that of Abraham.’

Until recently I had forgotten the old man’s talk, but last winter fortune took me to Jerusalem, and then from Amman, the ancient Philadelphia, to Baghdad. From there we went to Kish, and helped in the excavations which are being carried on jointly by the University of Oxford and the Field Museum of Chicago. Unfortunately, we did not get to Mosul, so we were not able to see the city of Nineveh, which lies on the other side of the Tigris from the modern town.