1a+-+Amorites

The Amorites by Meg Hall and Shawna Montgomery


====__Background:__ The Amorites dominated Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine from 2000 to about 1600. They originated in Arabia then traveled to Mesopotamia and then moved into Syria. Then they traveled East, into Canaan. The Amorites destructed Ur and Sumer but did not win the battle, just weakened their city-states. The Amorites developed kingdoms instead of city-states. Amorite refers to a Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the third millennium BC, and also the god they worshiped, Amurru. ==== ====__Religion and Culture:__ There seem to have be cults of the moon-god Sin, Amurru and Marduk, their supreme god. In the Enuma Elish an explanation is given for why Marduk was lifted up to the supreme god, replacing Ea and Enlil. With this myth, legitimacy was given for the Amorite conquest and replacement of national kings. The Amorites are also mentioned in the Old Testament in the Bible, whom they were the first people Moses fought upon returning with the Hebrew from Sinai. ==== __Their Appearance__: They have been described to have had fair skin, light hair, blue eyes, and pointed beards. __Economy: __ They had reorganized the government of the Sumerians. Instead of having many city-states, they just had cities. The monarch was giving all the power instead of each individual city; as a result the monarch became more powerful. They used this power to collect taxes and build strong armies.



Sources: http://www.crystalinks.com/amorites.html http://www.angelfire.com/va3/violingirl/amorites.html http://i-cias.com/e.o/amorites.htm