Human society was captured by Satan under Adam. The elites are of Satan, not of God. This is recorded of Jesus while living in Judea , Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence (John 18:36 [KJV]). He also said this while talking to the descendants of Israel living there, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8:44 [KJV]). Israel is a land that links Mesopotamia to Egypt through God's people but in the book of Romans God makes the point that the link was always to extract a spiritual elite from the world not impose a physical one on the world.

This subject is being dealt with as a component of my series on The Princes, the Priests and the Prophets hence the preface of PPP. The link here is provided to connect with the main article.

The Earliest known civilization

Sumer is the first known complex civilization, meaning that it had city-states and hence adopted more than family type administration. It also had writing. Cuiform is recognised by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world. The cuneiform writing system is not based on an alphabet, the marks represent words words, or parts of them, or syllables, or parts of them. .Historians believe that the development of writing was driven by the needs of that type of organisation. Cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BC and is called a system of pictographs. These pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract and were written on clay when it was soft with a blunt reed.

Sumer occupied the region of southern Mesopotamia along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates which were to the Sumerians as the Nile was to Egypt. Kish, Lagash, Adab and Ur are some famous Sumerian cities. The head of Sumerian ruler Gudea, c. 2,150 BC is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer where you can pursue this further. The name Sumerian was created by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians for these ancient non-Semitic-speaking people who lived south of them. The Sumerians called themselves black-headed people , or tsalmat-qaqqadi and their land was ki-en-gi(-r) meaning place of the noble lords . Abraham was in my opinion Sumerian. At that time the alternatives were Sumerian or Amorite but Abraham claims to be a Hebrew and Amorites were definitely not Hebrews. Amorites became entrenched in Babylonia for the purpose of trading. One of these Amorites, Abi-ramu or Abram by name, is the father of a witness to a deed dated in the reign of Hammurabi's grandfather https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-legend-of-the-amorites-1.5493696 . This seems strong support for Abraham as an Amorite except that he says he was not. The Akkadians also called Sumerians black-headed people but it was tsalmat-qaqqadi, in the Semitic Akkadian language. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite anhar(a), all refer to the same area of Mesopotamia and could be variants of the word Shumer. One way that Mesopotamian history lines up with the Bible is with Erech/Erec, a city in Sumer. Their flood story is recorded during the Ubaid Period, named after Tell al-'Ubaid, which predates Sumer. Sumerian civilization developed in the Uruk period, continued into the Jemdet Nasr period (named after the site Tell Jemdet Nasr) and ended in the Early Dynastic period. The Uruk period is when they developed trade contacts with Northern Mesopotamia, Syria and Arabia. At its highest the civilization consisted of about a dozen city-states each typically comprised of a walled city dominated by a ziggurat until Lugalzagesi (reigned c. 2375 - 2350 BC) king of Umma and high priest of Nisaba. He claimed in his inscription that Enlil gave to him all the lands between the upper and the lower seas , meaning between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Erech is Babylonian for Uruk which was conquered by Nimrod in Genesis 10:10.

It is from here that archaeology claims Northern Mesopotamia was colonised and writing invented. Genesis 11:2 says that they were travelling eastward when Nimrod started the colonisation process . Colonisation is from Nimrod. History records Erech as the first city and they are simulations on youtube like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5HFQvx0u2c and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gej5L3neyeU which give a sense of life there. Uruk was situated on an eastern channel of the Euphrates River but that channel has long since dried up. The map above shows Akkad (Accad) to the north of Sumer and Babylon between the two. Other well known cities of Sumer were Ur, Lagash, and Kish. Lugalzagesi, was defeated by Sargon of Akkad who founded the Akkadian Empire. Nimrod conquered both Erech and Akkad and he became pivotal to Babylon and it is Babylon that I am interested in.

was no mean city. The image here is from https://www.crystalinks.com/uruk.htm l where I encourage you to checkout this further. It lies south of Babylon - the site of the of the tower of Babel. It is linked to the flood by stories like that of its founder Enmerkar, who constructs the Eanna (Sumerian "House of Heavens") temple for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh builds the city wall around Uruk and is king of the city. Art from this period shows that the people were by no means crude. One of the Sumers greatest contributions to posterity is the so-called King List, a clay tablet that documents the names of most of the ancient rulers of Sumer as well as the lengths of their reigns.

Sumerian is the first language recorded in history and it was replaced by Akkadian. The Sumerian language is called a language isolate meaning that it has no known origin or descendant. Akkadian is a Semitic language that was eventually replaced by Old Aramaic. It is the earliest attested Semitic language and in its earliest written form occurs as a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform. History records that under Sargon (founder of the Empire) and his successors, the Akkadian language was briefly imposed on neighbouring conquered states, such as Elam and Gutium, indicating that by then the languages were already confounded. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad. Babylon was a religious and cultural centre at that time and not an independent state. According to the Sumerian King List, there were five rulers of Akkad: Sargon, Rimush, Manishtusu, Naram-Sin (also known as Naram-Suen), and Shar-Kali-Sharri over a period of 142 years. There is quite a bit to read on the Akkadian Empire at https://www.ancient.eu/akkad/#targetText=According%20to%20the%20Sumerian%20King,142%20years%20before%20it%20collapsed . They show an arrogance similar to that of Nimrod who was determined to establish himself above all. Sargon placed key trusted people as administrators over 65 different cities according to later Babylonian texts. He also set his daughter, Enheduanna, as High Priestess of Inanna at Ur to control and manipulate religious/cultural affairs from behind the scene. Enheduanna is recognized today as the world's first writer known by name and she created the hymns to Inanna. The following extract is taken from http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4073.htm :

109-114 The great gods kissed the earth and prostrated themselves. The high mountain land, the land of cornelian and lapis lazuli, bowed down before you, but Ebih did not bow down before you and did not greet you. Shattering it in your anger, as desired, you smashed it like a storm. Lady, pre-eminent through the power of An and Enlil, ....... Without you no destiny at all is determined, no clever counsel is granted favour.

Chronology of Mesopotamia

According to Ancient History Encyclopaedia https://www.ancient.eu/Mesopotamia/ @ 2017-12-07

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two rivers') was an ancient region in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today's Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey.

Mesopotamia was a collection of people with various cultures who were bonded together by their written language, their gods, and their attitude toward women. Women and men had basically equal rights. Abraham came from Mesopotamia to begin God's system but the leading rival system also began in Mesopotamia. You can refer to my opening graphic to see the essence of the area.

Just as Egypt's development depended on the Nile, Mesopotamia depended on the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The dependence upon these rivers is implied in its name. The Fertile Crescent is a name that links these three great rivers. I think that it is reasonable to expect that Noah would have followed the most fertile land to the most hospitable area. They begin in the mountains of eastern Anatolia (Turkey), then they travel through Syria and northern Iraq and then to the alluvial plain of central Iraq. An alluvial plain is a largely flat area created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is the smaller area over which the rivers flood but the alluvial plain is the larger area encompassing all that the floodplains have covered as it shifted over time. Genesis says this of Nimrod:

Shinar is defined by M-Strong (Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries) as:
H8152 Shin`ar (shin-awr') n/l.
Shinar, a plain in Babylonia.

The rivers flow in a south-easterly direction through the central plain and discharge into the Persian Gulf. It is possible that Noah followed the rivers from Anatolia and Nimrod continued to Babylon in the plain of Shinar. They were just seeking the most hospitable area in which to live. The Bible tells us that there were four rivers flowing through the Garden of Eden.

Gihon came from Ethiopia which is the same source as the Nile. The Euphrates has the same name. The Tigris could be Hiddekel considering the reference to Assyria. That is three out of the four. It is unusual to find gold in areas with rich deposits of oil but there is a mining company called Mahd Dahab or Mahd Al-Dahab in Saudi Arabia just off the Red sea. The image of Mining in Saudi Arabia was taken from a document at http://www.saudi-mining.com/images/uploads/documents/Mining_Report.pdf entitled Mining in the oil kingdom . If I was looking for Pison I would start with the Red Sea. That would mean that it has expanded over the years.

Chronology of Mesopotamia

I have shaded the possible time of the patriarchs in green and the time of the captivity of Israel and Judah in light red. There is a significant challenge in discussing the time of Abrahams life in relation to the dates of rulers in Mesopotamia. This stems from the disputes over the Biblical chronology. To avoid that debate I am going to extend an assumption made in discussing Egypt i.e. that the patriarch lived during the Middle Kingdom (2055 - 1650 BC) and proceed on the basis that it is true. You can find the debate at https://creationwiki.org/Biblical_chronology_dispute and https://answersingenesis.org/bible-timeline/abraham-and-the-chronology-of-ancient-mesopotamia/ . That lines up with Mesopotamian history. Now I am going to also proceed on the basis that the accepted chronology of Mesopotamia is true! You will see that at the beginning the dates are impossible by the Biblical record but this does not mean that the later dates are not close enough. The Bible historians are just as ridiculous sometimes. Some state that the Tower of Babel occurred within 100 years of the flood. To do that  and have more than about 700 men around, then they would have been breeding like flies and the Bible does not indicate that. There are some things to consider that does mare the population reasonable though.

The first is Longer Life Spans. Noah lived 350 years after the flood (Genesis 9:28) therefore he was dead when Abraham was born. According to Genesis 11, Shem lived 500 years after the flood and he too was dead. We do not know about the other children because the Bible only gives lifespan data for the first born, but it is not unlikely that they all had similar lifespans. Similarly it is not unreasonable to expect that Noah's other children had similar lives. On the other hand the Bible does not record very large families as normal. Even though they lived long it does not mean that they had lots of children.

Next consider the Birth rates. It might well have been Higher than what is normal for now. Arphaxad and Salah each have only one of their sons mentioned in Genesis 10 but we know from Genesis 11 that they each had at least two because they all begat sons and daughters after the first son to produce the 70 sons in Genesis 10. The Greek Septuagint (LXX) includes Elisa , between Javan and Tubal the sons of Japheth; however, as this name is found in no other ancient source and not in I Chronicles, he is therefore assumed to be a duplicate of Elisha, son of Javan. Cainan son of Arpachshad is also listed in the LXX. The genealogy of Jesus in St. Luke 3:36, is taken from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text and includes the name. That is the source of the 72 names, as opposed to the 70 names found in Jewish and Western Christian sources.

Since there are 14 fathers listed in this chapter that gives us an average of 5 sons per father. Assuming that they were an equal numbers of daughters, which would be necessary if each had a family, then this would give us an average of 10 children per father. Consider that Abraham did not begin fathering children until he was 100 years old but has at least 8 sons (Genesis 25:1-6) then the 10 is not unreasonable.

I found an useful calculation on this http://www.increasinglearning.com/blog/population-abraham website.

There are 9 generations listed for the line of Shem in Genesis 11. If we assume that there were no deaths within the first 250 years, and if we assume that each man fathered 5 sons, then we can calculate the size of Shems family by 5 times itself 9 times, i.e. 5x5x5x5x5x5x5X5x5 = 1,953,125. This gives us a total of 1,953,125 male descendents of Shem at the time of Abraham. Since Noah had three sons: Shem, Japheth and Ham, we multiply by three to get 5,859,375 males. Doubling to account for females gives a population of 11,718,750 people at the time of Abraham. Now remember that this assumes that nobody dies.

I think that it is important to state that the Bible never says that Nimrod built the tower of Babel. That comes from Josephus and other Jewish sources. It is interesting how untrue things get stuck in peoples minds. What the Bible says is And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. [2] And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. [3] And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. [4] And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth Genesis 11:1-4 (KJV). It was a collaborative effort according to the Bible. Nimrod did not control the world but apparently he did control land in Shinar, And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. [9] He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. [10] And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar Genesis 10:8-10 (KJV). You might also note that some of these other sources also claim that the king Amraphel, who wars with Abraham later in Genesis, is Nimrod himself! I stick with Nimrod because it is convenient, not because it is necessarily true, much like how we say Paul instead of the writer of Hebrews .  Peleg was born 401 years after the flood and if Nimrod is the one that organised the world to build the tower and city then he would have been a very charismatic person.

The table suggests that Abraham could have been a prince from the Third Dynasty of Ur that was ousted in 2004 BC by Elamites. God could have warned him of the collapse of the empire and he might have left just in time.

For people like wh like more detail I refer you to the exhibit Are Nimrod and Sargon I the same person? on the website Rapture Forums , https://www.raptureforums.com/forums/threads/are-nimrod-and-sargon-i-the-same-person.77910/ . While I find it very informative it does make some claims that I believe lack support. For example the claim about bi-sexual Pharaohs and to counter that you might consider reading this article from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Egypt .

Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia until its gradual replacement by Aramaic. Accad (a.k.a. Akkad) was part of the kingdom of Nimrod (Genesis 10:10). Under Akkadian rule all Semitic and Sumerian tribes of the Mesopotamia were first united.

Semites (the name comes from Shem one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis) is the name used for the people who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. Semitic languages are languages closely related to Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew and were formerly called Oriental languages in European literature. According to the Bible the people from Babylon were dispersed by language not family.

It is therefore reasonable to expect that the same language is spoken in a given area. According to genesis 10 it would appear that Noah's family was already divided into nations by this time.

The questions then are how much confounding did He do and was it along family lines? I use the map below but it perpetuates the myth that God wanted to destroy all Canaan's offspring using Israel. Hittites came from Anatolia or Asia Minor and Amorites came from Mesopotamia.

Sumerian is the earliest attested Semitic language and hence preceded Akkadian. Sumerian relics include tons of the stone blocks that were used for the Sumerian's record keeping. The records primarily have to do with religion (the stars) and wealth (crops). So as far as records go these were a part of the system. At the time of the original writing of this webpage Sussex County Vocational Technical School District had a webpage dedicated to Sumerians  http://www.sussexvt.k12.de.us/science/The%20History%20of%20the%20World%20Secrets%20of%20the%20Ancient%20Past/Mesopotamia/The%20Sumerians.htm dedicated to Sumerians which said:

The states of Sumer were ruled a priest-king who saw to the leading of the military, overseeing trade judging disputes and, most importantly, conducting religious ceremonies. The Sumerians developed bureaucracy, whereby the king would send information through his minions (who were also priests) to the people and would oversee the farming operations including: surveying land, assigning fields and distributing harvested crops. The authority was given to the monarch by the gods through a divine selection process and therefore he deserved to be worshipped, respected and obeyed.

Another website (MACROHISTORY : WORLDHISTORY) contains this webpage http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch01.htm which says says ...The Sumerians appear "to have been the first people to commandeer the agricultural surplus grown by the community and create a privileged ruling class. We said earlier that Abram came from Ur. The same webpage continues to said: Sumerian cities grew from what had been the place where a temple was located. At least twelve cities arose among the Sumerians. Among them were Ur, Uruk, Kish and Lagash Ur, for example, becoming a city of about 24,000 people. In the center of each city was a temple that housed the city's gods, and around each city were fields of grain, orchards of date palms, and land for herding. According to Samuel Noah Kramer, early in Sumerian civilization a temple corporation owned "some of the land, which it rented to sharecroppers; the remainder was the private property of individual citizens. That was captured around 2018 but the webpage is still there at Friday 17 Nov 2023 08:38:44 PM AST.

Akkadians dominate Mesopotamia

To summarise history from the perspective of archaeology as I see it, we have a Sumerian system that began to dominate people and operate as a protection racket, then a unifying Akkadian system that brought everybody under one in Mesopotamia.

On the matter of Nimrod, I captured this from the Wikipedia webpage dedicated to him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod when I originally wrote this article around 2018:

Attempts to match Nimrod with historically attested figures have failed. Nimrod may not represent any one personage known to history and various authors have identified him with several real and fictional figures of Mesopotamian antiquity, including the Mesopotamian god Ninurta or a conflation of two Akkadian kings Sargon and his grandson Naram-Sin (2254 - 2218 BCE), and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243 - 1207 BCE).

That webpage is still there and as of version 17:53, 14 October 2023‎ it still basically said the same thing. For me I think that the evidence is strong in favour of Sargon alone but the reference to Naram-Sin is interesting because of the image that we have of him. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to show that he had kinky hair. It may or may not be the same hair that Sargon had but in my opinion it is also the hair that we see on Hammurabi. In the two images of Hammurabi shown I could not ascertain that the one on the right was a genuine relic from his time and I do not believe that it is. My point being that what we consider as racial characteristics did not define them. Remember that the Bible says they were divided by language not appearance. The Caucasian perspective of the world that exists today did not exist then. Based on the images it appears that the long beard might have been ornamental and could be removed like the judges' wigs of today. Many of the images of Hammurabi displayed on the internet are not originals from his time. The ones displayed here are originals as far as I can ascertain.

I don't know where the historians got some of their dates from so I do not attach a lot of confidence to them,  nevertheless Wikipedia still says on its webpage devoted to Tower of Babel, when I last checked it was under caption Enumeration of scattered languages timestamped 13:13, 4 November 2023:‎

Villani adds that it "was begun 700 years after the Flood, and there were 2,354 years from the beginning of the world to the confusion of the Tower of Babel. And we find that they were 107 years working at it; and men lived long in those times". According to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, however, the project was begun only 200 years following the Deluge.

Villani refers to Giovanni Villani ( c. 1276 or 1280 1348) who wrote the Nuova Cronica (New Chronicles) on the history of Florence and people hold him in high regard. The point is that Sargon and the Tower of Babel are within that rough time period, especially considering that, in my opinion, the historical dates are embellished before the time of Sargon.

God called Abram from this lifestyle and gave him another way to live.

The Akkadian Empire, whose capital was called Akkad in ancient Mesopotamia in the Bible, is considered by many the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia. The empire united Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule and caused widespread bilingualism until Akkadian eventually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language. According to scholars the Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24^th and 22^nd centuries BC, through the conquests of its founder Sargon of Akkad who, along with his successors, imposed the the Akkadian language on conquered states. Several scholars also identify Sargon with Nimrod. According to James Ussher's chronology (the theologically accepted standard), Creation took place in 4004 BCE and the Great Deluge in 2348 BC. Of course this is hotly contested for up to about 1000 years earlier (about 3300 BC).

In Genesis 10 we find the origins of Babylon and Assyria.

The NET version says

Eber is the father of the Hebrews and it is after his child Peleg was born that the people were scattered (Genesis 11:16). Eber was born 267 years after the flood and Peleg was born 401 years after the flood. Eber was a great-grandson of Noah's son Shem. Shem-> Arpachshad -> Selah -> Eber -> Peleg. Assur was also Shem's son i.e. Shem -> Assur. Assyria is the same as the land of Asshur. It is reasonable to assume that Asshur was alive when Nimrod established his Empire since Nimrod was third generation and Asher was the generation before. Ham -> Cush -> Nimrod. The land of Asshur was Assur's land that Nimrod conquered or else he could not build anything there.

Unfortunately there is no undisputed meaning of the names of these places. What I am going to do is to make some assumptions of what I believe is likely in each situation in order to establish some probabilities. That is not to say that there are not excellent places to look e.g. at Abarim Publications where there are exhibits like this one on Shinar https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Shinar.html#.WxfM_K3U-V4

Shinar and Assyria

The word translated Babylon in Joshua 7:21 is actually Shinar in Hebrew. In Daniel 1:2 Nebuchadnezzar took the items from the temple to Shinar. Shinar is in Mesopotamia (or is Mesopotamia) and is associated with Babylon. Smith's Bible Dictionary says of Shinar, (country of two rivers ), the ancient name of the great alluvial tract through which the Tigris and Euphrates pass before reaching the sea --the tract known in later times as Chaldaea or Babylonia....

Noah's descendants travelled from the west (Genesis 11:2) and finally reached Shinar where they decided to build the tower, possibly because it provided a naturally flat foundation for the huge structure. In KJV Genesis 11:2 says And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there, but the same construction in Hebrew is used in Genesis 13:11 which says, Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. The context of Genesis 13:11 where Lot went to Sodom and Abraham in the opposite direction, shows that the construction means eastWARD not from the east. Shinar and Mesapotamia is the same place.

Among the options for the meaning of Shinar is the Hebrew masculine noun (no'ar) which means youth or early life (1 Samuel 12:2, Proverbs 5:18, Isaiah 47:12) but the meanings give me very little to form deductions from, except to say the it probably had to do with full of life too i.e. fertile and with plenty of fish and game.

The land immediately following the flood, when God would have repeated the command that he gave to Adam and Eve, was full of abundance and Mesopotamia seems to have been especially so.

I made the suggestion earlier that it was an intensely fertile area because of the alluvial plain. It had plenty for everyone, there was no need to conquer or take over others' property. Nimrod started his empire at Babylon (Genesis 10:10-11) taking over the whole of Shinar and probably took the land of Asshur by violence to extend his empire. Nimrod was a hunter, that was his contribution to the society, and probably easily conquered the surrounding territories to build his empire.

From the time of Abel in Genesis 4 we have shepherds.

So it was not necessary to hunt. Noah had looked after animals on the ark and hence knew husbandry. After the flood Noah went to the trouble of establishing a vineyard.

He was a farmer and if he had a vineyard then he probably also kept livestock. So Nimrod hunted because he preferred that lifestyle and was good at it (a mighty hunter). It was within character for Nimrod to shed blood so there is no surprise that Nimrod began a kingdom and extended it by conquering Assur (the people descended from Assur). Nimrod left his domain (his family descended from Ham) and sought to conquer at least part of Shem, the ones that God had promised a blessing - Genesis 9:18-27.

The Bible does not say that Nimrod was in control of the world but it would seem that he dominated all the ones that went towards Mesopotamia and they, were of the same mind in building the tower.

If we combine the Epic of Gilgamesh with the Bible record it would seem that his strategy was the same as todays, viz. kill God. Get God out of the picture. It is the nature of creatures to dominate others and It seems that Nimrod let that nature prevail and wanted to rule and conquer.

Nimrod's system of conquest is the same as the systems of today. It appears that the system started out as one of collaboration and agreement against God and His way. This is the same approach that Satan has. Assyria and Babylon had the same culture of violence. It was not God's peaceful culture to spread out but one based on another god. It would seem that Assur was next door to Babel all along. Shem and Ham's descendants lived next door.

Up to the time of Nimrod the whole earth spoke one language but following the confounding of the languages at Babel they broke off into language groups that were perhaps lead by core families. The nations were not based on Noah's children but on Noah's children's families.

Genesis 10:1-11:26 records how the nations were composed. The were formed from combinations of Noah's grandchildren. Genesis 11:1-9 shows how they were separated into language groups but Genesis 10 indicates that those groups were by family. This shows that Biblically speaking there were never three races. The Bible does not say that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel. It does say that all the people did And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. [3] And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter (Genesis 11:2-3 [KJV]). The Bible indicates that all people came through Mesopotamia and that all languages have roots there. Mizraim is supposed to be the ancestor of Egypt. The way that the story reads implies that Mizraim was in Shinar with the others at the time of the tower and so Mesopotamian society precedes Egyptian society.

Acknowledgements

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch03-ham.htm

https://www.gotquestions.org/who-Arameans.html

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/cuneiform-6-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-worlds-oldest-writing-system/