The world around the old.., p.6
The World around the Old Testament, page 6
The Heritage of the Amorites
The picture of pastoralism offered here is not intended to present a static conception of ancient society, with a single mode of engagement between farmers and herders, settled and mobile communities, as populations related by residence and by kinship. Each historical period brought innovations and extinctions, and the social landscape varied from place to place, interacting with the particular conditions of each one. Nevertheless, it appears that the integration of long-distance pastoralism with agricultural communities has been underestimated across wide swaths of time and place through the early history of the Near East. Where we encounter social bonds based on kinship, especially in larger constellations that may be called “tribal,” these may often serve just the kind of integration represented by the Amorites of third-millennium Mesopotamia.
In the Iron Age, both Israel and the Arameans preserve evidence of tribal organization as one dimension of their social traditions. These peoples took political form in similar lands at the margins of settlement and steppe, and herding groups appear to have contributed at some level to both Israelites and individual Aramean peoples. As such, these were to some degree the social descendants of the Amorites—the only kind of descent possible from Amorites, who do not define an ethnic or political category. According to the Bible, Israel was originally an association of tribes, but in the scheme of Samuel and Kings, inherited by Chronicles, the tribal lines faded in significance before the unifying force of monarchy. Given this attention to kings and their influence, it is difficult to measure the perseverance and strength of tribal bonds under the new institution. One hint of their survival may be found in the blessings of Jacob, where the people of Asher are praised for their provision of the king (Gen. 49:20), suggesting a monarchic setting for this tribal text.61 By this time, however, the role of mobile pastoralism may have faded in Israel, leaving only the shells of forgotten forms and customs. The nomads known to monarchic Israel and Judah, especially in the west, may have been true outsiders to Israelite society in a way that had been the case for the Amorites or those who followed them in the early Iron Age.
For Further Reading
Buccellati, Giorgio. The Amorites of the Ur III Period. Naples: Istituto Orientale di Napoli, 1966.
Charpin, Dominique. “Histoire politique du Proche-Orient amorrite (2002–1595).” In Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit, edited by Pascal Attinger, Walther Sallaberger, and Markus Wäfler, 25–480. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004.
Durand, Jean-Marie. Documents épistolaires du palais de Mari, Tomes I, II, III. LAPO 16–18. Paris: Cerf, 1997, 1998, 2000.
Fleming, Daniel E. Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
———. The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Heimpel, Wolfgang. Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
Michalowski, Piotr. The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011.
Porter, Anne. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
———. “You Say Potato, I Say . . .: Typology, Chronology and the Origin of the Amorites.” In Sociétés humaines et changement climatique à la fin du troisième millénaire: Une crise a-t-elle eu lieu en Haute-Mésopotamie?, edited by C. Marro and C. Kuzucuoglu, 69–115. Paris: de Boccard, 2007.
Sallaberger, Walther. “From Urban Culture to Nomadism: A History.” In Sociétés humaines et changement climatique à la fin du troisième millénaire: Une crise a-t-elle eu lieu en Haute-Mésopotamie?, edited by C. Marro and C. Kuzucuoglu, 417–56. Paris: de Boccard, 2007.
Toorn, Karel van der. “Amurru.” DDD 32–34.
1. For recent discussion of the second-millennium Hittite kingdom, see Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and for the first-millennium Syrian realms that continued this cultural stream, see Bryce, The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
2. The extended treatment by Niels Peter Lemche proposes a controversial interpretation that limits application of the term in a way that is not broadly accepted, yet it nevertheless provides a basic idea of the sources (The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites [Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1991]).
3. The essential study was long that of Giorgio Buccellati, The Amorites of the Ur III Period (Naples: Istituto Orientale di Napoli, 1966). This is now dated, as interpretation of ancient social and political structures has evolved. Now the essential recent discussions are found in Anne Porter, “You Say Potato, I Say . . : Typology, Chronology and the Origin of the Amorites,” in Sociétés humaines et changement climatique à la fin du troisième millénaire: Une crise a-t-elle eu lieu en Haute-Mésopotamie?, ed. C. Marro and C. Kuzucuoglu (Paris: de Boccard, 2007), 69–115; Porter, “Tax and Tribulation, or Who Were the Amorrites?,” in Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations: Weaving Together Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 251–325; and Piotr Michalowski, “The Amorites in Ur III Times,” in The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 82–121. Porter is an archaeologist, and Michalowski is a Sumerologist specializing in texts, though each undertakes a historical reconstruction that takes account of broader evidence.
4. One expression of this application of Amorite identity to Mesopotamia after the fall of Ur is found in the treatment of early second-millennium history by Dominique Charpin, a key player in the past generation of publication of and research based on the Mari archives: “Histoire politique du Proche-Orient amorrite (2002–1595),” in Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit, ed. Pascal Attinger, Walther Sallaberger, and Markus Wäfler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004).
5. One influential expression of this historical reconstruction is found in John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 48–56. On the specific question of Amorites in the southern Levant, Bright concludes a review of evidence that might indicate new populations in the early second millennium: “That these newcomers were ‘Amorites,’ of the same Northwest-Semitic stock as those whom we met in Mesopotamia, seems highly probable. Their names, so far as these are known, point unanimously in that direction” (p. 55).
6. For a recent history that reflects the current state of affairs and takes into account European, Israeli, and American scholarship, see Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London: T&T Clark, 2007). The first broad historical challenge was issued by Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974). There remains enormous room for debate, but the foundations for discussion have shifted massively since the mid-twentieth century.
7. I undertook two extended efforts to reconsider how early second-millennium settings could have produced echoes that still resound in elements of the biblical account of Israelite origins: “Mari and the Possibilities of Biblical Memory,” RA 92 (1998): 41–78; and “Genesis in History and Tradition: The Syrian Background of Israel’s Ancestors,” in The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, ed. James Hoffmeier and Alan Millard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 193–232. In The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), I reevaluate the relationship of the Bible to the history of Israel in more sweeping terms.
8. See Buccellati, Amorites, and Michalowski, “Amorites,” above.
9. The term “Amorite” is written with cuneiform signs that are generally read mar-tu, and readers will often encounter the name “Martu” or “Mardu” in discussions of Amorites in Sumerian texts. Michalowski (“Amorites,” 105–7) now concludes that there was no such Sumerian word, and these signs were in fact simply read amurrum or “Amorite.”
10. See Walther Sallaberger, “From Urban Culture to Nomadism: A History,” in Marro and Kuzucuoglu, Sociétés humaines et changement climatique, 445, for one identification of this western site as the original Amorite land.
11. Both Michalowski (“Amorites,” 93–105) and Porter (“Tax and Tribulation,” 296–310) argue vigorously that Amorites are as much associated with lands east of Sumer as west.
12. In this analysis I align myself with the interpretation of Porter, who understands Amorite identity to be rooted in the pastoralist communities who were completely integrated into settled and urban life, even as elements from these communities moved across long distances with the flocks. Sallaberger (“From Urban Culture to Nomadism,” 417–56) likewise considers the Amorite category to indicate herdsmen, but in confining pastoralism to separate “nomadic” groups he gives too little weight to the abundant evidence for Amorites in urban settings. In an argument that in some ways parallels that of Porter, Michalowski likewise points out the interplay of settled and mobile life in ancient pastoralism, though he then minimizes the identification of Amorites in Sumerian texts with herding groups (“Amorites,” 88–93).
13. See Porter, “Tax and Tribulation,” 314–15, including table 5, for the general chronological and geographical range of third-millennium evidence.
14. On the western land of Amurrum, see the next section. Michalowski (“Amorites,” 104) observes with regard to specific references to an Amorite “land,” “The term kur MAR.TU is not, properly speaking, a specific location, which is why it never has a place-name classifier /ki/ but is a descriptive term that refers to the highlands in which certain Amorites were thought to live. As such, it has no borders and could possibly be used of more than one area.”
15. This is the burden of her entire discussion in Mobile Pastoralism.
16. This commonplace is taken up, for example, in the overview of Amélie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 BC (London: Routledge, 1995), 1:74–75.
17. The archives found at Kanesh (Kūltepe) in central Turkey generated even more tablets than the huge finds for ancient Mari, and the bibliography is naturally enormous. For a sampling, consider Mogens Trolle Larson, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies (Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1976); Cécile Michel, ed., Old Assyrian Studies in Memory of Paul Garelli (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2008); Gojko Barjamovic, Ups and Downs at Kanesh: Chronology, History and Society in the Old Assyrian Period (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2012).
18. The bibliography for Mari is equally overwhelming. For fairly recent treatments in English, see Wolfgang Heimpel, Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); and Daniel E. Fleming, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). In fact, primary expertise in this material is found in France, based on responsibility for publishing the finds for Mari. Beginning in 1982, this project was led by Jean-Marie Durand, and his collection of French translations with commentary remains an important resource: Documents épistolaires du palais de Mari, Tomes I, II, III, LAPO 16–18 (Paris: Cerf, 1997, 1998, 2000). For broader reference to the literature of those involved with Mari publication, see the notes for any of these works.
19. Charpin, “Histoire politique,” 57–58.
20. Durand, “Le mythologème du combat entre le dieu de l’Orage et la Mer en Mésopotamie,” MARI 7 (1993): 46–47.
21. For publication of the text (A.2730) see Jean-Marie Durand, “Peuplement et société à l’époque amorrite (I): Les clans Bensim’alites,” Amurru 3 (2004): 120–21; Durand kindly allowed me to cite the relevant part of this text before his publication, with my translation, in Fleming, “Possibilities of Biblical Memory,” 61n91.
22. See the revised edition of this text in Andrew George, Babylonian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2009), 32–33.
23. A.2760; Marco Bonechi, “Relations amicales syro-palestiniennes: Mari et Haṣor au XVIIIe siècle av. J.C.” FM 1 (1992): 10.
24. FM 3 143; Grégoire Ozan, “Les lettres de Manatân,” FM 3 (1997): 296–97.
25. For extended historical discussion, see Itamar Singer, “A Concise History of Amurru,” appendix in Amurru Akkadian: A Linguistic Study, by Shlomo Izre’el (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 2:135–95.
26. FM 7 26:49, 52; Jean-Marie Durand, “Le culte d’Addu d’Alep et l’affaire d’Alahtum,” FM 7 (2007): 99–102.
27. The text is A.109, cited in isolation in Jean-Marie Durand, “Unité et diversités au Proche-Orient à l’époque amorrite,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le Proche-Orient ancien, ed. Dominique Charpin and Francis Joannès (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1992), 125.
28. M.7950+, published by Dominique Charpin, “Les malheurs d’un scribe ou de l’inutilité du sumérien loin de Nippur,” in Nippur at the Centennial, ed. Maria de Jong Ellis (Philadelphia: University Museum, 1992), 24–25. This translation is that of Jack Sasson, “About Mari and the Bible,” RA 92 (1998): 121–22.
29. For contrasting perspectives on the situation of Sumerian after the fall of Ur, see two articles in Seth L. Sanders, ed., Margins of Writing, Origins of Culture (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2007): Christopher Woods, “Bilingualism, Scribal Learning, and the Death of Sumerian,” 95–124; and Piotr Michalowski, “The Lives of the Sumerian Language,” 163–90.
30. ARM XXVII 135, letter to Zimri-Lim of Mari from Zimri-Addu, governor of the Qaṭṭunân district.
31. A.361, in Dominique Charpin, “Un traité entre Zimri-Lim de Mari et Ibâl-pî-El II d’Ešnunna,” in Marchands, diplomats et empéreurs: Études sur la civilisation mésopotamienne offertes à Paul Garelli, ed. Dominique Charpin and Francis Joannès (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1991), 141–45. The key list appears in two places, II 2ʹ–4ʹ and III 13ʹ–15ʹ, more complete in the latter.
32. A.489, in Dominique Charpin and Jean-Marie Durand, “La prise du pouvoir par Zimri-Lim,” MARI 4 (1985): 323n131; the letter is from an official named Rip’i-Dagan to Zimri-Lim and addresses the defeat of Ishme-Addu and Yasmah-Addu, the two sons of Samsi-Addu. Rip’i-Dagan reproaches some group that has not been adequately enthusiastic in its support for Zimri-Lim in the past. The reference to the population ruled by the Mari king seems to occur after this main preserved section, in the last visible lines, cited in Durand, “Unité et diversités,” 113n137.
33. F. R. Kraus, Ein Edikt des Königs Ammi-ṣaduqa von Babylon (Leiden: Brill, 1958), e.g., p. 30, paragraphs 2ʹ:9ʹ; 4ʹ:24; 6ʹ:1.
34. Durand, “Unité et diversités,” 13–14; with extended discussion of Zimri-Lim’s Hana kingdom in Fleming, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors, 142–69; reinterpreted in Fleming, “Kingship of City and Tribe Conjoined: Zimri-Lim at Mari,” in Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Jeffrey Szuchman (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2009), 227–40.
35. ARM VI 76, letter to Zimri-Lim from Bahdi-Lim, governor of the Mari district, discussed in Fleming, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors, 156–59.
36. Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 309–10.
37. For an orientation to recent discussion of ethnicity as a category in archaeological research, see Siân Jones, “Ethnicity: Theoretical Approaches, Methodological Implications,” in Handbook of Archaeological Theories, ed. R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D. G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippindale (Plymouth, UK: Altamira, 2008), 321–34.
38. ARM XXVI 24; on this letter, see Fleming, “Possibilities of Biblical Memory,” 69–70.
39. On the importance of this god to the region, see Lluís Feliu, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
40. Adelina Millet Albà, “La localisation des terroirs benjaminites du royaume de Mari,” in Amurru 3 (2004): 225–34.
41. Karel van der Toorn, “Amurru,” DDD 32–34.
42. On the theme of uncivilized Amorites in early second-millennium literature, see Jerrold S. Cooper, The Curse of Agade (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 30–33.
43. Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 293–95, treats the Marriage of Martu at some length. The text itself is available, with English translation, on the site of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr171.htm).
44. For Numushda, see “A Hymn to Numushda for Sîn-iqisham (Sîn-iqisham A)” in the collection of the online Electronic Text Corpus (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr2671.htm).
