AMORRITES. – A people settled in Canaan before Israel (Hebrew hā-'Emōrī, always with the article and in the singular; Septuagint 'Αμορραῖοι, hence Vulgate Amorrhaei). The Bible always includes them in its enumeration of the pre-Israelite peoples (Gen. 15:21; Ex. 3:8; 13:5; 23:23; 32:2; 34:11; Deut. 7:1; 20:17; Ios. 3:10; 5:1; 9:1; 11:3; 12:8; 24:11; etc.), at times as the principal nucleus of the ethnic group alongside the Hittites (Num. 13:30), so that they also represent the whole of the pre-Israelite Palestinian populations (Gen. 15:16; Ios. 24:15; Am. 2:9 f.) and therefore sometimes correspond to the «Canaanites» (Ios. 24:15, 18; Iude. 6:10; I Sam. 7:14; I Reg. 21:26; Ex. 16:3, 45; etc.).
For the Assyro-Babylonians, the Amurru, or «westerners» (Egyptian Amorra), were the population of the mountainous country of Amurru (ideogram MAR-TU), or of the west, which comprised the immense territory west of the Euphrates, from the oasis of Palmyra to the Mediterranean (therefore called the sea of Amurru) and to the oasis of Teima, including the regions of Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, Transjordan, and northern Arabia. Only around the sixteenth century B.C. did the term Amurru become restricted to Phoenicia with its entire hinterland, referring particularly to the mountainous region of the Orontes and of Lebanon and Antilebanon, from Qadeš to the port of Akka and the Lake of Tiberias.
From the ethnological standpoint, some authors, basing themselves on Am. 2:9, which describes the A. as «a tall and robust race», and on Egyptian paintings that depict them bearded, with yellowish skin, blue eyes, and red eyelashes, included them among the Indo-European type, assimilating them to the Libyans. But L. Dürr, E. Kalt, and others, basing themselves on the genealogical classification of Gen. 10:15–16, connect the A. with the Hamites. At present the great majority of scholars recognize in them a strong and valiant group of the northwestern Semitic branch, which is called Amorrite-Canaanite (v. SEMITI). Their language, related to Canaanite, is known only from a few proper names of the First Babylonian Dynasty, in which the customary «God, my God» is often replaced by the equivalent «father, my father, brother, my brother»; their syntactical construction, different from that of Akkadian, can be identified in the Old Assyrian Cappadocian texts.
Against the isolated view of Th. Bauer, who places the cradle of the primitive A., independent of the later westerners, north of Assyria, A. T. Clay placed the cradle of the Semites and of Babylonian culture itself in Amurru, or northern Syria, from which the indigenous A. streamed forth. The hypothesis that an Amorrite wave brought the first Semites into Mesopotamia seems to be confirmed by the struggle of the Semitic king Sargon of Akkad, who in three campaigns (ca. 2725) defeated the nomadic Amurru, reaching the Mediterranean.
The kings of Larsa bear Amorrite names; from them came the foundation of the Babylonian Empire and of the First Amorrite-Babylonian Dynasty (ca. 1950–1600 B.C.), whose principal representative was its sixth king, HAMMURABI (HAMMURAPI) (v.), coinciding with the height of Amorrite power. Around 1900 B.C. the «Amorrite movement» spread around Palestine and established itself in that country; we know the names of A. cities and princes from the Egyptian «execration texts» of the nineteenth century B.C. (Berlin texts edited by K. Sethe, 1926; Brussels texts edited by G. Posener, 1940). At the same period Abraham found them in Palestine (Gen. 14:7, 13; 48:22), at least in the mountainous region (Num. 13:29), from which the Hittite invasion, around 1600 B.C., driving their Babylonian dynasty to an end, pushed them farther south, as far as the Arnon east of the Jordan.
In the first half of the fourteenth century, known from the letters of el-Amarna (v.), the A., who were under Egyptian control, attempted an insurrectionary movement in Syria-Palestine led by the Habiru under the direction of Abdi-Aširta, and especially of his son Aziru, who formed an alliance with the Hittite king Subbiliuluma (1388–1347), the enemy of Egypt (Boghasköi texts, v.). Nevertheless, at the battle of Qadeš (1294), Ramses II, victor over the Hittites, had among the Egyptian reserves «young men recruited from among the Amurru».
The origin of Jerusalem is Amorrite, as attested by the names of the city (Urusalim), of its kings Malki-Sedeq and Adoni-Sedeq, and of 'Abdi-Hiba in the letters of el-Amarna. The Hebrews found the remnants of the A. in the mountainous region of the south, southwest of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan: Ios. (5:1) thus distinguishes them from the Canaanites «of the regions along the Great Sea» (cf. Deut. 1:44; Ios. 10:6; 11:3); hence «mountain of the A.» was the southern Palestinian massif (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20; cf. Num. 13:30). At Israel’s entry, the Transjordanian kingdoms of Hesebon and Bashan were Amorrite (Num. 21:21 ff.). Groups of A. were also scattered throughout Palestine, usually so intermingled with the Canaanites that the Bible often does not distinguish them from the latter. Tiglath-pileser I (1115–1093), having occupied their region (Syria), definitively subjugated the A., who remained permanently broken, so that in David’s time only a few remnants of them existed, later subjected by Solomon to tribute. The A. then disappear from history; only their memory remained (Eid. 9:1; Neh. 9:8; Iud. 5:20). In their land of origin, the Phoenicians triumphed, perhaps representing a new wave of Canaanites closely related to the Amorrite group.
RELIGION. - The eponymous god of the Amorrites is Amurru, called in the Akkadian pantheon "Lord of the mountain" (bēl šadī), unknown in the archaic Sumerian pantheon but patron of the dynasty of Hammurabi, who called him "his God." With his ideogram MAR-TU, he appears already venerated before the Amorrite dynasty of Babylon. The ibex was sacred to him. His paredra is the goddess Ašratum or Aširtum, who is the "Lady of the plain," known under the name of Ašerāh among the Phoenicians (v. RAS ŠAMRA) and the Canaanites; this confirms the intimate relationships glimpsed between the Amorrites and the Canaanite-Phoenicians.