Are we to see in the Amraphel of Genesis the Khammurabi of the cuneiform inscriptions?  The difference in the names seems to make it impossible.  Moreover, Amraphel, we are told, was king of Shinar, and it is not certain that the Shinar of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis was that part of Babylonia of which Babylon was the capital.  This, in fact, was the northern division of the country, and if we are to identify the Shinar of scripture with the Sumer of the monuments, as Assyriologists have agreed to do, Shinar would have been its southern half.  It is true that in the later days of Hebrew history Shinar denoted the whole plain of Chaldaea, including the city of Babylon, but this may have been an extension of the meaning of the name similar to that of which Canaan is an instance.

Unless Sumer and Shinar are the same words, outside the Old Testament there is only one Shinar known to ancient geography.  That was in Mesopotamia.  The Greek geographers called it Singara (now Sinjar), an oasis in the midst of deserts, and formed by an isolated mountain tract abounding in springs.  It is already mentioned in the annals of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes iii.  In his thirty-third year (B.C. 1470), the king of Sangar sent him tribute consisting of lapis-lazuli “of Babylon,” and of various objects carved out of it.  From Sangar also horses were exported into Egypt, and in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, the king of Alasiya in Northern Syria writes to the Pharaoh,—­“Do not set me with the king of the Hittites and the king of Sankhar; whatever gifts they have sent to me I will restore to thee twofold.”  In hieroglyphic and cuneiform spelling, Sangar and Sankhar are the exact equivalents of the Hebrew Shinar.

How the name of Shinar came to be transferred from Mesopotamia to Babylonia is a puzzle.  The Mesopotamian Shinar is nowhere near the Babylonian frontier.  It lies in a straight line westward of Mosul and the ancient Nineveh, and not far from the banks of the Khabur.  Can its application to Babylonia be due to a confusion between Sumer and Sangar?

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that the position of the kingdom of Amraphel is by no means so easily determined as has hitherto been supposed.  It may be Sumer or Southern Babylonia; it may be Northern Babylonia with its capital Babylon; or again, it may be the Mesopotamian oasis of Sinjar.  Until we find the name of Amraphel in the cuneiform texts it is impossible to attain certainty.

There is one fact, however, which seems to indicate that it really is either Sumer or Northern Babylonia that is meant.  The narrative of Chedor-laomer’s campaign begins with the words that it took place “in the time of Amraphel, king of Shinar.”  Chedor-laomer the Elamite was the leader of the expedition; he too was the suzerain lord of his allies; and nevertheless the campaign is dated, not in his reign, but in that of one of the subject kings.  That the narrative has been taken from the Babylonian annals there is little room for doubt, and consequently it would follow from the dating that Amraphel was a Babylonian prince, perhaps that he was the ruler of the city which, from the days of Khammurabi onward, became the capital of the country.  In that case we should have to find some way of explaining the difference between the Hebrew and the Babylonian forms of the royal name.