Everything about Amorite totally explained
Amorite (
Sumerian MAR.TU,
Akkadian Tidnum or
Amurrūm,
Egyptian Amar,
Hebrew ’emōrî) refers to a
Semitic people who occupied the country west of the
Euphrates from the second half of the
third millennium BC. The term
Amurru refers to them, as well as to their principal deity.
Origin
In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites ("the
Mar.tu land") is associated with the West, including
Syria and
Canaan, although their ultimate origin may have been
Arabia. They appear as nomadic people in the Mesopotamian sources, and they're especially connected with the mountainous region of
Jebel Bishri in Syria called as the "mountain of the Amorites". The ethnic terms
Amurru and
Amar were used for them in
Assyria and
Egypt respectively. Amorites seem to have worshipped the moon-god
Sin, and
Amurru.
From the
21st century BC and likely triggered by the
22nd century BC drought, a large-scale migration of Amorite tribes infiltrated
Mesopotamia, precipitating the downfall of the Neo-Sumerian
Third Dynasty of Ur, and acquiring a series of powerful kingdoms, culminating in the triumph under
Hammurabi of one of them, that of
Babylon.
Known Amorites (mostly those of
Mari) wrote in a dialect of Akkadian found on tablets dating from
1800–
1750 BC showing many northwest Semitic forms and constructions. The
Amorite language was presumably a
northwest Semitic dialect. The main sources for our extremely limited knowledge about the language are proper names, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts. Many of these names are similar to later Biblical Hebrew names.
From inscriptions and tablets
In early inscriptions, all western lands, including Syria and Canaan, were known as "the land of the Amorites". "The
MAR.TU land" appears in the earliest
Sumerian texts, such as
Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, as well as early tablets from
Ebla; and for the
Akkadian kings Mar.tu was one of the "Four Quarters" surrounding Akkad, along with
Subartu, Sumer and
Elam. The Akkadian king
Naram-Sin records campaigns against them in northern Syria ca. 2240 BC, and his successor
Shar-Kali-Sharri followed suit.
By the time of the Neo-Sumerian
Ur-III empire, immigrating Amorites had become such a force that kings such as
Shu-Sin were obliged to construct a 170 mile wall from the
Tigris to the
Euphrates to hold them off . These Amorites appear as nomadic clans ruled by fierce tribal chiefs, who forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. Some of the Akkadian literature of this era speaks disparagingly of the Amorites, and implies that the neo-Sumerians viewed their nomadic way of life with disgust and contempt, for example:
» The MAR.TU who know no grain.... The MAR.TU who know no house nor town, the boors of the mountains.... The MAR.TU who digs up truffles... who doesn't bend his knees (to cultivate the land), who eats raw meat, who has no house during his lifetime, who isn't buried after death...
» They have prepared wheat and gú-nunuz (grain) as a confection, but an Amorite will eat it without even recognizing what it contains!
As the centralized structure of the neo-Sumerian empire of
Ur slowly collapsed, the component regions began to reassert their former independence, and places where Amorites resided were no exception. Elsewhere, armies of Elam were attacking and weakening the empire, making it vulnerable. Some Amorites aggressively took advantage of the failing empire to seize power for themselves. There wasn't an Amorite invasion as such, but Amorites did ascend to power in many locations, especially during the reign of the last king of the Ur-III Dynasty,
Ibbi-Sin. Leaders with Amorite names assumed power in various places, including
Isin,
Larsa, and
Babylon. The Elamites finally sacked Ur in ca. 2004 BC. Some time later, the most powerful ruler in Mesopotamia (immediately preceding the rise of
Hammurabi of Babylon) was
Shamshi-Adad I, another Amorite.
Effects on Mesopotamia
The rise of the Amorite kingdoms in Mesopotamia brought about deep and lasting repercussions in its political, social and economic structure.
The division into kingdoms replaced the Sumerian
city-state. Men, land and cattle ceased to belong physically to the gods or to the temples and the king. The new monarchs gave, or let out for an indefinite period, numerous parcels of royal or sacerdotal land, freed the inhabitants of several cities from taxes and forced labour, and seem to have encouraged a new society to emerge, a society of big farmers, free citizens and enterprising merchants which was to last throughout the ages. The priest assumed the service of the gods, and cared for the welfare of his subjects, but the economic life of the country was no longer exclusively (or almost exclusively) in their hands.
In general terms, Mesopotamian civilization survived the arrival of Amorites, as it had survived the Akkadian domination and the restless period that had preceded the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The religious, ethical, and artistic directions in which Mesopotamia had been developing since earliest times, were not greatly impacted by the Amorites' hegemony. They continued to worship the Sumerian gods, and the older Sumerian myths and epic tales were piously copied, translated or adapted, generally with only minor alterations. As for the scarce artistic production of the period, there's little to distinguish it from the preceding Ur-III era.
The era of the Amorite kingdoms, ca. 2000-1600 BC, is sometimes known as the "Amorite period" in Mesopotamian history. The principal Amorite dynasties arose in
Mari,
Yamkhad,
Qatna,
Assur (under
Shamshi-Adad I),
Isin,
Larsa, and
Babylon. This era ended with the
Hittite sack of Babylon (c. 1595 BC) which brought new ethnic groups - particularly
Kassites and
Hurrians - to the forefront in Mesopotamia. From the
15th century BC onward, the term
Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as
Kadesh on the
Orontes.
Biblical Amorites
The term
Amorites is used in the
Bible to refer to certain highland mountaineers who inhabited the land of
Canaan, described in
Gen. 10:16 as descendants of
Canaan, son of
Ham
They are described as a powerful people of great stature "like the height of the cedars," who had occupied the land east and west of the
Jordan; their king,
Og, being described as the last "of the remnant of the
giants" (
Deut. 3:11).
The terms
Amorite and
Canaanite seem to be used more or less interchangeably,
Canaan being more general, and
Amorite a specific component among the Canaanites who inhabited the land.
The Biblical Amorites seem to have originally occupied the region stretching from the heights west of the
Dead Sea (Gen. 14:7) to
Hebron (13:8; Deut. 3:8; 4:46-48), embracing "all
Gilead and all
Bashan" (Deut. 3:10), with the
Jordan valley on the east of the river (4:49), the land of the "two kings of the Amorites,"
Sihon and Og (Deut. 31:4;
Josh. 2:10; 9:10). Both Sihon and Og were independent kings.
These Amorites seem to have been linked to the
Jerusalem region, and the
Jebusites may have been a subgroup of them. The southern slopes of the mountains of
Judea are called the "mount of the Amorites" (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20). One possible etymology for "
Mount Moriah" is "Mountain of the Amorites," with loss of the initial syllable.
Five kings of the Amorites were first defeated with great slaughter by
Joshua (10:10). They were said to have been utterly destroyed at the waters of
Merom by Joshua (Josh. 11:8). It is mentioned that in the days of
Samuel, there was peace between them and the Israelites (1 Sam. 7:14). The Gibeonites were said to be their descendents, being an offshoot of the Amorites that made a covenant with the Hebrews; when Saul would break that vow and kill some of the Gibeonites, God sent a famine to Israel.
Amorites in Antisemitism
The view that Amorites were fierce nomads led to an idiosyncratic theory among some writers in the 19th Century that they were a tribe of "Germanic" warriors who at one point dominated the Israelites. This was because the evidence fitted then-current models of Indo-European migrations. This theory originated with
Felix von Luschan, who later abandoned it. Luschan's speculation was taken up by antisemites, notably
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who claimed that
King David and Jesus were both of Amorite extraction. This argument was repeated by the Nazi ideologist
Alfred Rosenberg.
Further Information
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