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The
Amorites....
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Amorite (Hebrew ’emōrî,
Egyptian Amar, Akkadian Amurrū
(corresponding to Sumerian MAR.TU or Martu) refers to a
Semitic people who
occupied the middle Euphrates area from the second half of the third
millennium BC and also appear in the Tanakh
and also the god they worshipped.
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Amorites rare
inscription
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In early Babylonian inscriptions, all western lands,
including Syria and Canaan, were known as "the land of the
Amorites", who
twice conquered Babylonia (at the end of the 3rd, and the beginning of the
1st millennia.)
The old name is an ethnic term, evidently connected with the terms Amurru
and Amar used by Assyria and Egypt respectively. In the Sumerian spelling MAR.TU, the name is as old as the first
Babylonian dynasty, but from the
15th century BC onwards, its syllabic equivalent Amurru is applied primarily
to the land extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes
within the vicinity of the Middle East. |
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Amorites was used by the Israelites to refer to certain
highland mountaineers, or hillmen (described in Gen. 14:7 as descendants of
Canaan) who inhabited that land. In the
Bible, 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 river, their king, Og, being
described as the last "of the remnant of the giants" (Deut. 3:11).
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The Biblical usage appears to show that the more specific
"Amorite" and less precise general
"Canaanite" terms were used synonymously,
the former being characteristic of Judean, the latter of Ephraimite and
Deuteronomic writers as well as the Assyro-Babylonians. A distinction is
sometimes maintained, however, when the Amorites are spoken of as the people
of the past, whereas the Canaanites are referred to as still surviving. The
term "Canaan," on the other hand, is confined more especially to the
southern district (from Gebal to the south of Palestine). |
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