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an active participant. Contrary to the assertions of advocates of biblical criticism that with the tale of Abraham the Bible loses in- terest in the general history of mankind and the Near East, to focus on the "tribal history" of one particular nation, the Bible in fact continues to relate (as it did with the tales of the Deluge and the Tower of Babel) events of major concern to mankind and its civili- zation: a war of unprecedented aspects and a disaster of a unique nature; events in which the Hebrew Patriarch played an important role. It is the tale of how the legacy of Sumer was salvaged when Sumer itself was doomed. In spite of numerous studies concerning Abraham, the fact re- mains that all we really know about him is what we find in the Bi- ble. Belonging to a family that traced its ancestry to the line of Shem. Abraham—then called Abram—was the son of Terah, his brothers being Harran and Nahor. When Harran died at an early age, the family was living in "Ur of the Chaldees." There, Abram married Sarai (later renamed Sarah). Then "did Terah take Abram his son and Lot his grandson, the son of Harran, and Sarai his daughter-in-law the wife of Abram his son: and they left and went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan: and they went as far as Harran, and dwelt there." Archaeologists have found Harran ("The Caravanry"). Situ- ated to the northwest of Mesopotamia at the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, it was a major crossroads in antiquity. As Mari con- trolled the southern gateway from Mesopotamia to the lands of the Mediterranean coast, so did Harran control the gateway of the northern route to the lands of Western Asia. Marking, at the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the limits of Nannar's domains where they bordered on Adad's Asia Minor. Harran was found by the ar- chaeologists to have been a mirror image of Ur in its layout and in its worship of Nannar/Sin. No explanation is given in the Bible for leaving Ur, and there is also no time stated, but we can guess the answers if we relate the departure to events in Mesopotamia in general and in Ur in particu- lar. We know that Abraham was seventy-five when he proceeded later on from Harran to Canaan. The tenor of the biblical narrative suggests a long stay at Harran and depicts Abraham on his arrival there as a young man with a new bride. If Abraham, as we have concluded, was bom in 2123 B.C.. he was a child often when Ur- THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN