word had originally been brought from Babylonia itself in the days when Babylonian writing and culture first penetrated to the West.  In the Sumerian or pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea eri signified a “city,” and eri in the pronunciation of the Semites became uru.  Hence it was that Uru or Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, received its name at a time when it was the ruling city of Babylonia, and though the Semitic Babylonians themselves never adopted the word in common life it made its way to Canaan.  The rise of the “city” in the west was part of that Babylonian civilization which was carried to the shores of the Mediterranean, and so the word which denoted it was borrowed from the old language of Chaldaea, like the word for “palace,” hekal, the Sumerian e-gal, or “Great House.”  It is noteworthy that Harran, the resting-place of Abraham on his way from Ur to Palestine, the half-way house, as it were, between East and West, also derived its name from a Sumerian word which signified “the high-road.” Harran and Ur were two of the gifts which passed to Canaan from the speakers of the primaeval language of Chaldaea.

We can now understand why Melchizedek should have been called the “king of Salem.”  His capital could be described either as Jeru-salem or as the city of Salem.  And that it was often referred to as Salem simply is shown by the Egyptian monuments.  One of the cities of Southern Palestine, the capture of which is represented by Ramses II. on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes, is Shalam or Salem, and “the district of Salem” is mentioned between “the country of Hadashah” (Josh. xv. 37) and “the district of the Dead Sea” and “the Jordan,” in the list of the places which Ramses III. at Medinet Habu describes himself as having conquered in the same part of the world.

It may be that Isaiah is playing upon the old name of Jerusalem when he gives the Messiah the title of “Prince of Peace.”  But in any case the fact that Salim, the god of peace, was the patron deity of Jerusalem, lends a special significance to Melchizedek’s treatment of Abram.  The patriarch had returned in peace from an expedition in which he had overthrown the invaders of Canaan; he had restored peace to the country of the priest-king, and had driven away its enemies.  The offering of bread and wine on the part of Melchizedek was a sign of freedom from the enemy and of gratitude to the deliverer, while the tithes paid by Abram were equally a token that the land was again at peace.  The name of Salim, the god of peace, was under one form or another widely spread in the Semitic world.  Salamanu, or Solomon, was the king of Moab in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.; the name of Shalmaneser of Assyria is written Sulman-asarid, “the god Sulman is chief,” in the cuneiform inscriptions; and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters was sent by Ebed-Sullim, “the servant of Sullim,” who was governor of Hazor.  In one of the Assyrian cities (Dimmen-Silim, “the foundation-stone of peace”) worship was paid to the god “Sulman the fish.”  Nor must we forget that “Salma was the father of Beth-lehem” (1 Chron. ii. 51).