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309 army from the East. But the invaders beat them and "seized all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah" as well as one prize hos- tage: "They took with them Lot, the nephew of Abraham, who was residing at Sodom." On hearing the news, Abraham called up his best cavalrymen and pursued the retreating invaders. Catching up with them near Damascus, he succeeded in releasing Lot and retrieving all the booty. Upon his return he was greeted as a victor in the Valley of Shalem (Jerusalem): And Malkizedek, the king of Shalem, brought forth bread and wine, for he was a priest unto the God Most High. And he blessed him, saying: "Blessed be Abram unto the God Most High, Possessor of Heaven and Earth; And blessed be the God Most High who hath delivered thine foes into thine hand." Soon the Canaanite kings also arrived to thank Abraham, and of- fered him all the seized possessions as a reward. But Abraham, saying that his local allies could share in that, refused to take "even a shoe lace" for himself or his warriors. He had acted neither out of friendship for the Canaanite kings nor out of enmity for the Eastern Alliance; in the war between the House of Nannar and the House of Marduk, he was neutral. It was for "Yahweh, the God Most High, Possessor of Heaven and Earth, that I have raised my hands," he stated. in the ancient world. A year later, in 2040 B.C., Menluhotep IL, leader of the Theban princes, defeated the northern Pharaohs and extended the rule of Thebes (and of its god) up to the western ap- proaches to the Sinai peninsula. In the following year Amar-Sin at- tempted to reach the Sinai peninsula by sea, only to find his death Le. by a poisonous bite. The attacks on the Spaceport were thwarted, but the danger to it was not removed; and the efforts of Marduk to gain the supremacy intensified ever more. Fifteen years later Sodom and Gomorrah went up in flames when Ninurta and Nergal unleashed the Dooms- day Weapons. Abraham: The Fateful Years The failed invasion did not arrest the rush of momentous events