The Amorites () were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people who originated in Western Mesopotamia.Pruitt, Madeline Lawson (2019). Cultural Identity, Archaeology, and the Amorites of the Early Second Millennium BCE: An Analytical Paradigmatic Approach. University of California. p. 1. Initially appearing in Sumerian records , they expanded and ruled most of the Levant and Mesopotamia, and parts of Egypt, from the 21st century BC to the start of the 16th century BC.
The Amorites established several prominent city-states in various locations, such as Isin, Kurda, Larsa, Mari, and Ebla, and later founded Babylon and the Old Babylonian Empire. They also founded the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt during the fragmented era of the Second Intermediate Period in the Nile Delta, which was characterized by rulers bearing Amorite names such as Yakbim Sekhaenre, and were likely part of the later Hyksos.
The term , in Akkadian and Sumerian texts, refers to the Amorites, their principal deity, and the Amorite kingdom. The Amorites are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as inhabitants of Canaan, both before and after the conquest of the land under Joshua.Van Seters, John, "The Terms 'Amorite' and 'Hittite' in the Old Testament", Vetus Testamentum, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 64–81, 1972
History
Third millennium BC It is thought that terms like were used to represent who we now call the Amorites:
In two Sumerian literary compositions written long afterward in the Old Babylonian period, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird, the Early Dynastic ruler of Uruk Enmerkar (listed in the Sumerian King List) mentions "the land of the ". It is not known to what extent these reflect historical facts.Katz, Dina, "Ups and Downs in the Career of Enmerkar, King of Uruk", Fortune and Misfortune in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Warsaw, 21–25 July 2014, edited by Olga Drewnowska and Malgorzata Sandowicz, University Park, US: Penn State University Press, pp. 201–210, 2017
There are also sparse mentions about Amorites (often as MAR-DUki) in tablets from the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Ebla, dating from 2500 BC to the destruction of the city in BC.Archi, Alfonso, "Mardu in the Ebla Texts", Orientalia, vol. 54, no. 1/2, pp. 7–13, 1985 From the perspective of the Eblaites, the Amorites were a rural group living in the narrow basin of the middle and upper Euphrates in northern Syria.Giorgio Bucellati, "Ebla and the Amorites", Eblaitica 3, pp. 83–104, 1992 The Eblaites used the term MAR.TU in an early time for a state and people east to Ebla (around Emar and Tuttul), which means the name Amurru for the west is later than the name for the state or the people.Streck, Michael P., Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit. Band 1: Die Amurriter, die onomastische Forschung, Orthographie und Phonologie, Nominalmorphologie, Ugarit-Verlag, 2000, p. 26
For the Akkadian emperors of central Mesopotamia, was one of the "Four Quarters" surrounding Akkad, along with Subartu (north), Sumer (south), and Elam (east). Naram-Sin of Akkad records in a royal inscription defeating a coalition of Sumerian cities and Amorites near Jebel Bishri in northern Syria .Westenholz, Joan Goodnick, "Chapter 6. Naram-Sin and the Lord of Apišal", Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts, University Park, US: Penn State University Press, pp. 173–188, 1997 His successor, Shar-Kali-Sharri, recorded in one of his year names "In the year in which Szarkaliszarri was victorious over Amurru in the [Jebel Bishri]".F. Thureau-Dangin, Recueil des tablettes chaldéennes, Paris, 1903
By the time of the last days of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the immigrating Amorites had become such a force that kings such as Shu-Sin were obliged to construct a wall from the Tigris to the Euphrates to hold them off.Lieberman, Stephen J., "An Ur III Text from Drēhem Recording 'Booty from the Land of Mardu.'", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 22, no. 3/4, pp. 53–62, 1968Buccellati, G., "The Amorites of the Ur III Period", Naples: Istituto Orientale di Napoli. Pubblicazioni del Semionario di Semitistica, Richerche 1, 1966 The Amorites are depicted in contemporary records as nomadic tribes under 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 Akkadian- and Sumerian-speakers of Mesopotamia viewed their nomadic and primitive way of life with disgust and contempt. In the Sumerian myth "Marriage of Martu", written early in the 2nd millennium BC, a goddess considering marriage to the god of the Amorites is warned:
As the centralized structure of the Third Dynasty of Ur slowly collapsed, the city-states of the south such as Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna, began to reassert their former independence, and the areas in southern Mesopotamia with Amorites were no exception. Clemens Reichel, "Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period", Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, 1996 Elsewhere, the armies of Elam were attacking and weakening the empire, making it vulnerable. Ur was eventually occupied by the Elamites. They remained until they were rejected by the Isin ruler Ishbi-Erra, which marked the beginning of the Isin-Larsa period.
2nd millennium BC
After the decline of Ur III, Amorite rulers gained power in a number of Mesopotamian city-states beginning in the Isin-Larsa period and peaking in the Old Babylonian period. In the north, the Amorite ruler of Ekallatum, Shamshi-Adad I conquered Assur and formed the large, though short-lived Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia.Wygnańska, Zuzanna, "Burial in the Time of the Amorites. The Middle Bronze Age Burial Customs From a Mesopotamian Perspective", Ägypten Und Levante / Egypt and the Levant, vol. 29, pp. 381–422, 2019 In the south, Babylon became the major power under the Amorite ruler Sumu-la-El and his successors, including the notable Hammurabi. Higher up the Euphrates, to the northwest, the Amorite kingdom of Mari arose, later to be destroyed by Hammurabi. Babylon itself would later be sacked by the Hittites, with its empire assumed by the Kassites. West of Mari, Yamhad ruled from its capital Halab, today's Aleppo, until it was destroyed by the Hittites in 16th century BC. The city of Ebla, under the control of Yamhad in this period, also had Amorite rulership.Matthiae, Paolo, "New Discoveries at Ebla: The Excavation of the Western Palace and the Royal Necropolis of the Amorite Period", The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 18–32, 1984
There is thought to have been an Amorite presence in Egypt from the 19th century BC. The Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, centred in the Nile Delta, had rulers bearing Amorite names such as Yakbim. Furthermore, increasing evidence suggests that the succeeding Hyksos of Egypt were an amalgam of peoples from Syria of which the Amorites were also part. Based on temple architecture, Manfred Bietak argues for strong parallels between the religious practices of the Hyksos at Avaris with those of the area around Byblos, Ugarit, Alalakh and Tell Brak and defines the "spiritual home" of the Hyksos as "in northernmost Syria and northern Mesopotamia", areas typically associated with Amorites at the time.
In 1650 BC, the Hyksos established the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled most of Lower and Middle Egypt contemporaneously with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth dynasties of Thebes during the chaotic Second Intermediate Period.
Fall In the 16th century BC, the Amorite era ended in Mesopotamia with the decline and fall of Babylon and other Amorite-ruled cities. The Kassites occupied Babylon and reconstituted it under the Kassite dynasty under the name of Karduniaš around 1595 BC. In far southern Mesopotamia, the native First Sealand dynasty had reigned over the Mesopotamian Marshes region until the Kassites brought the region under their control. In northern Mesopotamia, the power vacuum left by the Amorites brought the rise of the Mitanni (Ḫanigalbat) c. 1600 BC.
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 River in northern Syria.Lawson Younger, K., "The Late Bronze Age / Iron Age Transition and the Origins of the Arameans", Ugarit at Seventy-Five, edited by K. Lawson Younger Jr., University Park, US: Penn State University Press, pp. 131–174, 2007
After the mid-2nd millennium BC, Syrian Amorites came under the domination of first the Hittites and, from the 14th century BC, the Middle Assyrian Empire. They then appear to have been displaced or absorbed by other semi-nomadic West Semitic-speaking peoples, known collectively as the Ahlamu during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The Arameans rose to be the prominent group amongst the Ahlamu. From c. 1200 BC onward, the Amorites disappeared from the pages of history, but the name reappeared in the Hebrew Bible.John Van Seters, "The Terms 'Amorite' and 'Hittite' in the Old Testament", VT 22, pp. 68–71, 1972
Language
The Amorite language was first attested in the 21st–20th centuries BC and was found to be closely related to the Canaanite, Aramaic and Sam'alian languages. In the 18th century BC at Mari Amorite scribes wrote in an Eshnunna dialect of the East Semitic Akkadian language. Since the texts contain Northwest Semitic forms, words and constructions, the Amorite language is thought to be a Northwest Semitic language. The main sources for the extremely limited extant knowledge of the Amorite language are the proper names and loanwords, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts.Gelb, I. J., "An Old Babylonian List of Amorites", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 39–46, 1968Michalowski, Piotr, "Chapter 5. The Amorites in Ur III Times", The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom, University Park, US: Penn State University Press, pp. 82–121, 2011 Ignace J. Gelb, "Computer-aided Analysis of Amorite", Assyriological Studies 21, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Amorite proper names were found throughout Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period, as well as places as far afield as Alalakh in Turkey and modern day Bahrain (Dilmun).Knudsen, Ebbe Egede, "An Analysis of Amorite: A Review Article", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 34, no. 1/2, pp. 1–18, 1982 They are also found in Egyptian records.
Ugaritic is also a Northwest Semitic language and is possibly an Amorite dialect.Pardee, Dennis. "Ugaritic", in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (2008) (pp. 5–6). Roger D. Woodard, editor. Cambridge University Press, (262 pages).
Religion A bilingual list of the names of ten Amorite deities alongside Akkadian counterparts from the Old Babylonian period was translated in 2022. These deities are as follows: Dagan, who is identified with Enlil. Dagan was the supreme god in many cities in the Euphrates region of Upper Mesopotamia, especially at sites such as Mari, Tuttul, and Terqa. Babylonian texts refer to the chief god of the Amorites as Amurru (, read as "ilu Amurru"), corresponding to their name for the ethnic group. They also identify his consort as the goddess Ašratum.Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The God Amurru as Emblem of Ethnic and Cultural Identity in "Ethnicity in Ancient Mesopotamia" (W. van Soldt, R. Kalvelagen, and D. Katz, eds.) Papers Read at the 48th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, July 1–4, 2002 (PIHANS 102; Nederlands Instituut voor her Nabije Oosten, 2005) 31–46 Kamiš, an otherwise poorly attested deity largely known from Akkadian and Amorite theophoric names. He was significant at Ebla, where a month was named after him. The bilingual identifies him with the god Ea though other god lists identify him with Nergal.