Hybridity,Hapiru, and Ethnicity in 2nd MillenniumBCEWestern Asia 145often associated with second millennium nomadic or non-urban lifestyles in Near East-
ern texts, the Amorites,hapiru, and Aramaeans, have been of special scholarly interest.
Fascination with these three groups is due in part to presumed connections with biblical
peoples and traditions.
The designation “Amorite” is the English rendering of the Akkadianamurru,the
Sumerian MAR.TU, and the Hebrew ̄ ̨emorˆı.ThetermAmurru, appearing in Near East-
ern texts for nearly two millennia, can denote the direction west from a Mesopotamian
perspective, a specific area, and/or a people.Amurruis usually understood to refer to the
Syrian steppe and its inhabitants, who rose to prominence in the early second millennium
BCE. Beginning in the second half of the third millennium, Amorites were sporadically
mentioned in Mesopotamian texts, usually in reference to non-urban, nomadic contexts.
During the Ur III period at the end of the third millenniumBCE, the Amorites appeared
in administrative texts and royal correspondence, the latter describing activities of Amor-
ite groups where they were usually depicted as enemies of the state who spoke their
own language. Following a gap of nearly two centuries, the Amorites reemerged in texts
dating to the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1900–1600BCE). These documents, many of
which originate from Mari, mention Amorite kingdoms and dynasties, signifying dra-
matic changes that occurred during the early second millennium in the Mesopotamian
political landscape. In some of the very early literary sources, the Amorites are por-
trayed as antagonists of the state, whereas administrative texts suggest that they were well
integrated into urban society. By the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1200BCE),amurru
continues to denote the cardinal direction west in Mesopotamian texts. However, in
Ugaritic and Hittite literature of this same period, this term now referred to a kingdom
located in the northern Levant, with Amorite dynasties documented at Ugarit and Byb-
los (Whiting 1995; Wossink 2009: 120–9). Despite this, there is no distinctly Amorite
material culture, and thus they are not clearly identifiable in the archaeological record.
Designated as one of the groups that inhabited Canaan before the emergence of Israel,
the biblical Amorites are described in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10–11) as descen-
dants of Canaan, a son of Ham (Genesis 10:16). Due in part to parallels in the onomastics
of Amorite and biblical names and the semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle of the Patriarchs as
described in the Book of Genesis, some scholars have been tempted to associate the patri-
archal traditions in the Bible with the documented Amorite expansion during the early
second millenniumBCE. However, this equation remains quite problematic (see, e.g.,
Dever 1977; Kamp and Yoffee 1980). What can be concluded is that the Late Bronze
Age Canaanites (see the following text), or inhabitants of the southern Levant, were
closely related to the more northern Amorites, linguistically and culturally. The one dis-
tinction that does emerge from the biblical account is that the Amorites inhabited the
“mountains” (e.g., Deuteronomy 1:44), traditionally a region that was less urban and
more rural or pastoral in character than the coastal plains and valleys where most of the
Late Bronze Age population of Canaan resided (Mendenhall 1992).
Amorite ethnicity has been explored in numerous publications of this archaeologically
invisible group. Of special note is K. Kamp and N. Yoffee’s groundbreaking study of
ethnicity in western Asia (1980) that incorporates the textual, archaeological, and ethno-
graphic evidence. They conclude that the Amorites “perceived themselves as having a
common origin, were labeled ‘Amorites’ in texts, shared a belief system, had a distinct
language, and respected the same leaders”—and thus should be considered an ethnic