AMORRITES. - A people settled in Canaan before Israel (Heb. hâ'-Emôrî, always with the article and in the singular; Septuagint "Âmôrêêô", whence Vulgate Amor-haei). The Bible always includes them in the enumeration of 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 principal nucleus of the ethnic group alongside the Hittites (Num. 13:30), so that it also represents the entire complex of pre-Israelite Palestinian populations (Gen. 15:16; Josh. 24:15; Amos 2:9ff.) and thus sometimes corresponds to "Canaanites" (Josh. 24:15; 18; Judg. 6:10; 1 Sam. 7:14; 1 Kgs. 21:26; Ezek. 16:3; 45; etc.).
For the Assyro-Babylonians, the Amurru or "Westerners" (Egyptian Amarra) were the people of the mountainous land of Amurru (ideogram mar-TU) or of the west, which included the vast 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 narrow to Phoenicia with its hinterland, specifically indicating the mountainous zone of the Orontes and Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon from Qadeš to the port of Akko and the Sea of Galilee.
From an ethnological standpoint, some authors, basing themselves on Amos 2:9, which describes the Amorites as "a tall and sturdy race," and on Egyptian paintings that depict 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 Amorites with the Hamites. At present, the vast majority of scholars recognize in them a strong and valiant group of the Northwest Semitic branch, which is called Amorite-Canaanite (v. SEMITES). Their language, akin to Canaanite, is known only from a few proper names of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty, in which "God, my God" is often replaced by the equivalent "father, my father; brother, my brother"; their syntactic structure, different from Akkadian, can be discerned in the Cappadocian Old Assyrian texts.
Against the isolated view of Th. Bauer, who places the cradle of the primitive Amorites, independent of the later Westerners, to the north of Assyria, A. T. Clay has placed the cradle of the Semites and of Babylonian culture itself in Amurru or northern Syria, from which the indigenous Amorites migrated. The hypothesis that an Amorite wave would have brought the first Semites into Mesopotamia seems belied by the campaign of the Semitic king Sargon of Akkad, who in three campaigns (c. 2725 B.C.) defeated the nomadic Amurru, reaching the Mediterranean.
The kings of Larsa bore Amorite names; from them derived the foundation of the Babylonian empire and of the 1st Amorite-Babylonian Dynasty (c. 1950-1600 B.C.), whose principal HAMMURABI (HAMMURAPI) (v.), who coincided with the peak of Amorite power. Around 1900 B.C. the "Amorite movement" spread around Palestine and established itself in that land; we know the names of Amorite 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 time, 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., putting an end to their Babylonian dynasty, pushed them further south, as far as Mount Hermon east of the Jordan.
In the first half of the 14th century, noted for the el-Amarna letters (v.), the Amorites, who were under Egyptian control, attempted an insurrectionary movement in Syria-Palestine led by the Habiru under the command of Abdi-Aširta, and especially of his son Aziru, who allied himself with the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma (1388-1347), an enemy of Egypt (texts from Boğazköy, v.). However, in the battle of Kadesh (1294 B.C.), Ramses II, victor over the Hittites, had in his Egyptian reserves "young men recruited from the Amorites."
The origin of Jerusalem is Amorite, as attested by the names of the city (Urusalim), its kings Malki-Ṣedeq and Adoni-Ṣedeq, and 'Abdi-Heba of the el-Amarna letters. The Hebrews found the remains of the Amorites in the mountainous region of the south, southwest of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan: Josh. 5:1 distinguishes them thus from the Canaanites and the "regions beyond the Great Sea" (cf. Deut. 1:44; Josh. 10:6; 11:3); hence "Mount of the Amorites" was the southern Palestinian massif (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20; cf. Num. 13:30). At the time of Israel's entry, the Transjordanian kingdoms of Heshbon and Bashan were Amorite (Num. 21:21ff.). Groups of Amorites were also scattered throughout Palestine, usually so intermingled with the Canaanites that the Bible often does not distinguish them from them. Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1093), occupying the region (Syria), definitively subdued the Amorites, who were thenceforth permanently weakened, so that in David's time only a few remnants survived, later subjected to tribute by Solomon. The Amorites then disappear from history; only their memory remained (Ezra 9:1; Neh. 9:8; Judg. 5:20). In their original land, the Phoenicians triumphed, who may have been a new wave of Canaanites very akin to the Amorite group.