AMORRHITES. - A people settled in Canaan before Israel (Hebrew hā-'Emōrī, always with the article and in the singular, Septuagint 'Αμορραῖοι, hence Vulgate Amorrhaei). It is always included by the Bible in the 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; Josh. 3:10; 5:1; 9:1; 11:3; 12:8; 24:11; etc.), sometimes as the chief nucleus of the ethnic group alongside the Hittites (Num. 13:30), so that it also represents the whole complex of the pre-Israelite Palestinian populations (Gen. 15:16; Josh. 24:15; Am. 2:9 ff.) and therefore sometimes corresponds to "Canaanites" (Josh. 24:15, 18; Judg. 6:10; 1 Sam. 7:14; 1 Kings 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 (hence 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 16th century B.C. did the term Amurru become restricted to Phoenicia with all its hinterland, indicating in particular the mountainous zone of the Orontes and of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon from Qadesh to the port of Acre and the Sea of Galilee.
From the ethnological standpoint, some authors, basing themselves on Am. 2:9, which describes the A. as a "tall and robust race," and on the Egyptian paintings that represent them as bearded, with yellowish skin, blue eyes and red eyelashes, included them in 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, link the A. with the Hamites. At present the great majority of scholars recognize in them a strong and valiant group of the north-western Semitic branch, which is called Amorite-Canaanite (v. SEMITES). Their language, akin to Canaanite, is known only from a few proper names of the First Babylonian Dynasty, in which the usual "God, my God" is often replaced by the equivalent "father, my father, brother, my brother"; their syntactic construction, different from that of Akkadian, can be identified in the Old Assyrian Cappadocian texts.
Against the isolated voice of Th. Bauer, who places the cradle of the primitive A., independent of the later westerners, to the 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 autochthonous A. swarmed forth. The hypothesis that an Amorite wave would have brought the first Semites into Mesopotamia seems refuted 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 Amorite names; from them derived the founding of the empire of Babylon and of the First Amorite-Babylonian Dynasty (ca. 1950-1600 B.C.), whose principal representative was the sixth king Hammurabi (v.), which coincided with the zenith of Amorite power. Around 1900 B.C. the "Amorite 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 19th century B.C. (Berlin texts edited by K. Sethe, 1926; Brussels texts edited by G. Posener, 1940). At the same epoch Abraham found them in Palestine (Gen. 14:7, 13; 48:22), at least in the mountainous zone (Num. 13:29), from which the Hittite invasion, around 1600 B.C., putting an end to their Babylonian dynasty, pushed them further south, as far as the Arnon east of the Jordan.
In the first half of the 14th century, known for the el-Amarna letters (v.), the A., who were under Egyptian control, attempted in Syria-Palestine an insurrectionary movement led by the Habiri under the guidance of Abdi-Aširta, and especially of his son Aziru, who formed an alliance with the Hittite king Suppiluliuma (1388-1347), enemy of Egypt (Boghazköi texts, v.). Nevertheless, at the battle of Qadesh (1294), Ramses II, victor over the Hittites, had in the Egyptian reserves "young men recruited from among the Amurru."
The origin of Jerusalem is Amorite, as attested by the names of the city (Urusalim), of its kings Melchizedek and Adoni-Zedek, and of 'Abdi-Hiba of the el-Amarna letters. The Hebrews found the remnants of the A. in the mountainous region of the south, south-west of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan: Josh. (5:1) thus distinguishes them from the Canaanites "of the regions by the great sea" (cf. Deut. 1:44; Josh. 10:6; 11:3); hence the "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 Heshbon and Bashan are Amorite (Num. 21:21 ff.). Groups of A. are moreover dispersed throughout all Palestine, usually so intermixed with the Canaanites that the Bible often does not distinguish them from these. Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1093), having occupied their region (Syria), definitively subdued the A., who remained weakened forever, so that in the time of David only a few remnants of them existed, later subjected by Solomon to tribute. The A. then disappear from history; only the memory of them remained (Ezek. 9:1; Neh. 9:8; Judg. 5:20). In their land of origin the Phoenicians triumphed, who were perhaps a new wave of Canaanites closely akin to the Amorite group.
RELIGION
The eponymous god of the A. is Amurru, called in the Akkadian pantheon "Lord of the mountain" (bēl šadī), unknown to the archaic pantheon of the Sumerians, but patron of the dynasty of Hammurabi, who called him "his God." Under his ideogram MAR-TU he appears as already worshipped before the Amorite dynasty of Babylon. The ibex was sacred to him. His paredra is the goddess Ašratum or Aširtum, who is the "Lady of the plain," under the name of Ašerāh popular among the Phoenicians (v. RAS ŠAMRA) and the Canaanites; which confirms the intimate relations glimpsed between the A. and the Canaanites-Phoenicians.