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Near East Kingdoms

Ancient Mesopotamia

 

Amorites / Amurru / Marti (Syria & Mesopotamia)
Incorporating the Numha Tribe

The fall of Sumerian civilisation in the form of the 'Ur III' dynasty of Ur circa 2004 BC left a vacuum which lasted for about a century. Conflict and chaos in Mesopotamia were eventually overcome as the Semitic-speaking Amorites, who had inherited much of their own civilisation and culture from Sumer, began to rise in power and importance.

Amorites began to arrive in the territory to the west of the Euphrates, modern Syria, from around 2500 BC. The Akkadians called them Amurru, Ur knew them as Martu, and they probably originated in Arabia (while a less popular theory places them in India). Although there was no actual invasion, for a period of five hundred years they drifted down into southern Mesopotamia, integrating into Sumerian civilisation where they lived in enclaves.

They were tribally organised, but not necessarily the wild and lawless nomads which Mesopotamian texts tend to portray. They served in the armies of 'Third Dynasty' Ur, and provided general labour both for Ur and for Akkad before that. As Ur declined, and with it Sumerian civilisation, many Amorites rose to positions of power. When the final end of Ur came at the hands of the Simashki rulers of Elam, the Amorites, virtually Sumerians themselves by now, were in a strong position to pick up the pieces.

Rather than maintain the Sumerian system of city states, where farms, cattle, and people belonged to the gods or the temples (ie. the king), the Amorites founded kingdoms which had their capitals at many of the old cities, even if some of these new kingdoms were virtually the equivalent of a city state in their size and power.

As well as inheriting the surviving Sumerian cities, the Amorites also built a number of large and powerful cities of their own, from Syria down to southern Mesopotamia. They also created a new society of free subjects who were able to farm their own lands and conduct business as they saw fit.

Their discoveries contributed extensively to the development of civilisation. They founded many of the basic concepts of early literature and mathematics, and they developed multiplication, which subsequently aided mercantile and sales transactions. This flowering of knowledge led to the creation of the 'Code of Hammurabi', one of the most important documents in Babylon's history. This was a series of 'laws' which emphasised the pursuit of justice, especially in relation to business transactions, and it set the form for later law codes.

The Numha tribe seem to have been the founders of the small northern Mesopotamian city of Ekallatum, although it was first ruled by a relative of the early Assyrian royal house, Ila-Kabkaba.

(Information by Peter Kessler and from the John De Cleene Archive, with additional information from Unger's Bible Dictionary, Merrill F Unger (1957), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and The Sumerian Kings List, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, & G Zólyomi ('List 2' of Sumerian rulers, available via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998).)

Sumerians

(Information by Peter Kessler and from the John De Cleene Archive, with additional information from Unger's Bible Dictionary, Merrill F Unger (1957), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer ('List 1' of Sumerian rulers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963), from Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period, Clemens Reichel (List of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are not on the Bruce R Gordon list as part of a dissertation proposal for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, 11 June 1996), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), from The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford 1977), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and The Sumerian Kings List, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, & G Zólyomi ('List 2' of Sumerian rulers, available via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998), and Evolution of Sumerian kingship (Ancient World Magazine).)

c.2334 - 2279 BC

It is Sargon I of Agade who claims to be the first king to unite Mesopotamia (Sumer and Agade, plus a wide swathe of northern Mesopotamia), although Enshakushanna of Uruk has already achieved that in the mid-twenty-fifth century BC.

Sargon's exploits create a realm which stretches from Anatolia and the Mediterranean, covering Amorites (Martu) on the western side of the Euphrates (who for now appear not to be pressing to enter Mesopotamia), up to Apum in northern Mesopotamia, and over to Elam in the east and Magan in the south.

c.2004 - 1900 BC

With the collapse of the Sumerian city states, Mesopotamia endures a century or so of chaos. The Amorites, who for several centuries had been living amongst the Sumerians, rise to power in southern and central Mesopotamia, as well as in northern Mesopotamia and Syria.

They found or expand cities and create kingdoms of their own, such as Amrit, Amurru, Andarig, Arvad, Dilbat, Ekallatum, Eshnunna, Hamath, Isin, Karana, Qattara, Razama, Terqa, and Tuttul (and probably Der as well, although records here are sketchy). They also assume control of older city states throughout Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan, such as Alalakh, Alep (Aleppo), Borsippa, Carchemish, Ebla, Gebal, Jericho, Kazallu, Kish, Lagash, Larsa, Mari, Nippur, Qatna, Sippar, Tuba, Ur and Uruk.

Amorite 'Sea Gate'
The 'Sea Gate' of the Amorites is dated to about 2000 BC

c.1940 BC

The early Assyrians begin making raids into southern Mesopotamia.

c.1897 BC

Although records are sketchy and imprecise, the small Amorite kingdom of Babylon seems to emerge approximately a century after the collapse of Sumer.

By now, many cities in northern Mesopotamia and Syria are under Amorite control, with each local ruler being associated with a city, such as Tuttul, and a land or territory which bears a tribal (and state) name, such as Amnanum, and this evidently refers to the ruler's less sedentary Amorite subject peoples. This practise is prevalent down to the smallest tribal 'kingdoms' such as Yaminite Samanum and Abattum in the Middle Euphrates, near Terqa.

c.1750 BC

Terah leads his Israelite people to settle in Harran, a city far up and to the east of the Euphrates. When he does there, his son, Abraham, inherits leadership of his community.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition of 1910, suggests that he and his people are Semitic-speaking Amorites rather than Semitic-speaking migrants from Ur. In fact the two options need not be opposing, as Amorites have had about three centuries to integrate into Mesopotamia before this point. Terah's migration probably even mirrors gradual Amorite infusion into Canaan.

Israelites
This slightly fanciful view of the migrating Israelites does show a surprisingly small number of participants (more are cropped off from the left, but even so their numbers are very finite), something which chimes with the 'ruling elite' theory of migration detailed in the introduction, above

c.1740 BC

According to the Bible, the Moabites first occupy the highlands close to the Dead Sea, from which they expel the native Emim. Moab son of Lot of the recently-arrived Israelites is the eponymous founder of the kingdom, while Ben Ammi, an illegitimate son of Lot, gains Ammon, east of the River Jordan and on Moab's northern border. Soon afterwards the Moabites themselves are driven further south by Amorite tribes, beyond the River Arnon which subsequently forms their new northern border. The move south does not save them, it seems, and they are conquered and dominated for an unknown period by Amorites.

Amorites, Semitic-speaking farmers
Amorites, Semitic-speaking farmers from the south who integrated into Mesopotamia, and then Syria and Canaan

c.1600 - 1100 BC

In the dark age of approximately a century and a half which is triggered by a general power vacuum in the region, and during which the Kassites take over Babylonia, the language of the Amorites disappears from southern and central Mesopotamia. However, in Syria and Canaan it becomes dominant (in Bashan, for example), with perhaps Ammon being the southernmost state to have an Amorite influence (which excludes Moab from having been converted during its period of Amorite domination). In Assyrian inscriptions from about 1100 BC, the term Amurru designates part of Syria and all of Phoenicia and Palestine but no longer refers to any specific kingdom, language, or population.

 
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