AMORITES. The Amorites are known from the Bible (to gether with the Jebusites, Hivites, etc.), as a pre-Israelite people in Canaan, and also as the inhabitants of two trans-Jordan king doms (Num. xxi.). The later Israelites believed that this primitive race was one of giants (Amos ii. 9 ; Deut. iii. II).
The non-biblical material has markedly increased our knowl edge and has also complicated it. Egyptian illustrations of the New Kingdom show the Palestinian Amorites to have been a race much more like the northern Europeans than the Semites; long headed, with blue eyes, straight nose and thin lips. Even the royal name Akvaruvash, the reputed contemporary of the ancient king Naram-Sin of Akkad (about 2 J3o B.C.), in the Hit tite copy of an inscription of the latter, seems to be Aryan or Indo-European (cf. Forrer, Die Boghaz-koi-Texte in Umschri f t, II. I, no. 3, col. i, line 12.) The mixture of races, however, which went on from the earliest times in Canaan and over a considerable area of the surrounding countries must be taken into account.
Another impression is gained from the Babylonian material of the earliest period, where "west" (as one of the quarters of the heavens) and "the land of the Amorites" (Aynurru, ideogr. Mar. Tu) were of identical meaning. The Amorites were inhabitants of a territory lying west of Babylonia, and the majority of them belonged (as forerunners of the Aramaeans) to the western Semitic race.
The motherland of these peoples was the region of the Middle Euphrates : Khana (near the modern Tell-Ishara, south of the mouth of the Khabur), Mari (near the extensive ruin-mounds Werdi and El-Erzi), Shukhi (between the modern `Ana and Hit), Subir-Subartu (the modern El-Jezireh, as far as the Tigris) and Naharina (the north-western part of El-Jezireh, near the old Harran). According to the old king list a dynasty from Mari had actually reigned over Babylon about 290o B.C., and the names and statues of old kings of the Sumerian period of the kingdom of Mari have been recovered. But the identification of this Mari with the old capital of the Amorites is still uncertain.
The Amorites were gradually driven out of their mother-terri tory by an invasion of the Kharri and Mittanni from the north. In Babylonia they settled at first in their own villages and town ships (e.g., in Sippar) as merchants and as. mercenary soldiers; but they soon began to reach out after sovereignty. About B.C. (according to Thureau-Dangin about 2105 B.c.) Sumu-abum founded the Amorite kingdom of Babylon. Hammurabi, his fifth successor, through his victory over the king Rim-Sin of Larsa, united the whole of Babylonia under his sway (19 2 5 B.c.) . This period of the Amorite dynasty meant for Babylonia the richest flowering of her culture. None the less, of ter 30o years, the Amo rite kingdom in Babylonia fell before an invasion of the Hittites (under King Murshilish I., 1758 B.c.) .
Meanwhile the Amorites had settled in the west of Lebanon and in the mountainous parts of Canaan, and perhaps even ruled Egypt for a short time. It is, in fact, probable that the foreign domination of Egypt, the so-called Hyksos (c. 1800-158o B.c.), is connected with the wanderings of this Amorite people. This period was that of the Amorites' greatest power ; what they lost in Babylonia was won in Egypt, Canaan and Syria. But after the downfall of the Hyksos kingdom the Amorites were in their turn subjugated by the native Egyptian Pharaohs of the i8th dynasty, especially by Thutmoses III. Only in Lebanon were they able to maintain what seems to have been a small Amorite kingdom, first under Egyptian and then under Hittite overlordship. The capital of this kingdom was probably Kadesh in Orontes, the modern Tell Nebi Mendi which is situated in the plain south of Homs (Emesa). From the Tell el-Amarna and Boghaz-keui cuneiform inscriptions we can follow the history of this kingdom for some 200 years (1400–I 200 B.C.) ; we know, for instance, that under the rulers Abd-ashirta, Aziru and their successors, it extended its sway for a time to the rich Phoenician seaports. The trans-Jordan kingdoms of the monarchs Sihon and Og (Num. xxi.) must have been the final offshoots of the great Amorite kingdom.
The importance and influence of the Amorites were over rated by the late Professor A. T. Clay of Philadelphia ; though his is the merit of having drawn attention to their importance. On the other hand, Bauer's careful researches have led him to an underestimation. According to him, Amurra, meaning the land to the west, or "the west," is a geographical term ; the mercenary sol diers who dominated Babylon under the "dynasty of Amurru" were from a hill country of that name, lying, however, to the north-east ; and the Amorite kingdom in the Lebanon and Orontes districts should be wholly separated from both of these. Thus the geographical and historical relations remain unintelligible.
There is a rich but scattered abundance of material on the language of the Amorites in the proper names and in the name lists from the time of the first Babylonian dynasty, in the foreign words and proper names to be found in Egyptian texts, and, above all, in the foreign words and glosses of the El-Amarna letters. From this it is seen that the language represents an earlier stage of the Hebrew language (q.v.).
T. Clay, Amurru, the Home of Northern Semites (1909) and The Empire of the Amorites (1919) ; Bahl, Kanaander and Hebrder (191I) ; Th. Bauer, Die Ostkanaander (1926) . See also O. Weber (J. A. Knudtzon) , Die El-Amarna Ta f eln, ii. , pp. 1132 sqq., concerning the Amurru kingdom; Bohl, Nieuwe Theol. Stud. (1921, pp. 65 sqq.) ; W. F. Albright, Am. Journ. Sem. Lang., (1925) , Pp. 282 sqq., concerning Mari. For the language see Bohl, Die Sprache der Amarnabriefe (19o9) ; M. Burchardt, Die altkanaandischen Fremdworte and Eigennamen im Aegyptischen (191o) ; Chiera, Lists of Personal Names, Univ. of Penn., Univ. Mus., Babyl. Sect., vol. xi., nos. 2 and 3 (1916, 1919) . (F. M. T. B.)