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68 It was located at the crossroads of major international trade and military land routes. Situated at the headwaters of the Euphrates River, it was also a hub for river transportation all the way downstream to Ur itself. Surrounded by fertile meadows watered by the river’s tributaries, the Balikh and Khabur rivers, it was a center of sheepherding. The famed “Merchants of Ur” came there for Harran’s wool, and brought in exchange to distribute from there Ur’s famed woolen gar- ments. Commerce in metals, skins, leather, woods, earthen- ware products, and spices followed. (The Prophet Ezekiel, who was exiled from Jerusalem to the Khabur area in Baby- lonian times, mentioned Harran’s “merchants in choice fab- rics, embroidered cloaks of blue, and many-colored carpets.”) Harran (the town, by that very name, still exists in Turkey, near the border with Syria, and was visited by me in 1997) was also known in ancient times as “Ur away from Ur”; at its center stood a great temple to Nannar/Sin. In 2095 B.c.k., the year in which Shulgi took over the throne in Ur, a priest named Terah was sent from Ur to Harran to serve at that temple. He took along his family; it included his son Abram. We know about Terah, his family, and their move from Ur to Harran from the Bible: Now these are the generationas of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor and Haran, and Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his land of birth, in Ur in Chaldea. And Abram and Nahor took wives— the wife of Abram was named Sarai and that of Nahor’s wife Milkhah.. . And Terah took with him his son Abram and Lot, the son of his son Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, and went forth with them from Ur in Chaldea by the way to Canaan; and they reached Harran and resided there. GENESIS II: 27-31 THE END OF DAYS