RELIGION. — The eponymous god of the Amorites is Amuru, called in the Akkadian pantheon “Lord of the mountain” (bel šadî), unknown in the archaic pantheon of the Sumerians, but patron of the dynasty of Hammurabi who called him “his god.” With his ideogram “MAR-TU” he was already venerated before the Amorite dynasty of Babylon. Sacred to him was the ibex. His paredros is the goddess Ašratum or Ašritum, who is the “Lady of the plain,” known under the name of Ašerah among the Phoenicians (v. RÄSS SAMRAH) and the Canaanites; this confirms the close relations perceived between the Amorites and the Phoenician Canaanites.
BIBL.: A. T. Clay, The empire of the Amorites (Yale Or. Series, Researches, VI), New Haven 1919 (F. M. T. Bohl, in Nieuwse theol. Studiën, 4 [1921], pp. 65-71, defines Clay’s theory as “Pan-Amurrismus”); A. Ungnad, Die ältesten Völkerwanderungen Vorderasiens, Breslau 1922; T. Bauer, Die Ostkanaanäer (calls the Amorites “eastern Canaanites”), Leipzig 1926; id., Eine Überprüfung der «Amoriter»-Frage, in Zeitschr. für Assyriologie, 39 (1928), pp. 145-70; P. Dhorme, Les Amorriens, in Revue Biblique, 37 (1928), pp. 63-79, 161-80; 39 (1930), pp. 161-78; 40 (1931), pp. 161-84; E. Forrer, Amuru, in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, I, 1932, pp. 99 ff.; F.-M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, I, Paris 1933, pp. 235-39, 371; II, 1936, pp. 1-33; A. Jirku, Wer waren die Amoriter?, in Zeitschr. für Rassenkunde, 2 (1935), pp. 225-31; J. Jelito, Die Amoriter, in Collectanea Theologica, 17 (1936), pp. 406-23; M. Noth, Die Welt des Alten Test., Berlin 1940, p. 165 ff. (calls the Amorites “eastern Proto-Aramaeans”); id., Die syrisch-palästinensische Bevölkerung des zweiten Jahrtausends V. Chr. im Lichte neuer Quellen, in Zeitschr. des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 65 (1942), pp. 9-67; A. Bea, Il movimento «amoritico»; i «testi di proscrizione», in Biblica, 24 (1943), pp. 239-47.