- UPHARSIN and they divide, one of the words written by the mysterious
hand on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace (Daniel 5:25). It is a pure
Chaldean word. “Peres” is only a simple form of the same word. - UPHAZ probably another name for Ophir (Jeremiah 10:9). Some,
however, regard it as the name of an Indian colony in Yemen, southern
Arabia; others as a place on or near the river Hyphasis (now the Ghana),
the south-eastern limit of the Punjaub. - UR light, or the moon city, a city “of the Chaldees,” the birthplace of
Haran (Genesis 11:28,31), the largest city of Shinar or northern Chaldea,
and the principal commercial centre of the country as well as the centre of
political power. It stood near the mouth of the Euphrates, on its western
bank, and is represented by the mounds (of bricks cemented by bitumen)
of el-Mugheir, i.e., “the bitumined,” or “the town of bitumen,” now 150
miles from the sea and some 6 miles from the Euphrates, a little above the
point where it receives the Shat el-Hie, an affluent from the Tigris. It was
formerly a maritime city, as the waters of the Persian Gulf reached thus far
inland. Ur was the port of Babylonia, whence trade was carried on with
the dwellers on the gulf, and with the distant countries of India, Ethiopia,
and Egypt. It was abandoned about B.C. 500, but long continued, like
Erech, to be a great sacred cemetery city, as is evident from the number of
tombs found there. (See ABRAHAM.)
The oldest king of Ur known to us is Ur-Ba’u (servant of the goddess
Ba’u), as Hommel reads the name, or Ur-Gur, as others read it. He lived
some twenty-eight hundred years B.C., and took part in building the
famous temple of the moon-God Sin in Ur itself. The illustration here
given represents his cuneiform inscription, written in the Sumerian
language, and stamped upon every brick of the temple in Ur. It reads:
“Ur-Ba’u, king of Ur, who built the temple of the moon-God.”
“Ur was consecrated to the worship of Sin, the Babylonian moon-God. It
shared this honour, however, with another city, and this city was Haran,
or Harran. Harran was in Mesopotamia, and took its name from the
highroad which led through it from the east to the west. The name is
Babylonian, and bears witness to its having been founded by a Babylonian
king. The same witness is still more decisively borne by the worship paid
in it to the Babylonian moon-God and by its ancient temple of Sin. Indeed,
the temple of the moon-God at Harran was perhaps even more famous in