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Who Were the Amorites? by Alfred HaldarReview by: Michael C. AstourJournal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Jul., 1975), pp. 217-219Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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BOOK REVIEWS 217
(p. 74) but in Gutium, in the Zagros range east
of Assyria. "West Semitic tribes appeared in the
region of the Upper Euphrates" not "at the
beginning of the second millennium B.c." (p. 124)
but very considerably earlier. Philo of Bybloslived ca. A.D. 100, not "c. 100 B.C." (p. 126); the
"Phoenician priest called Sanchuniaton" was not
Philo's "informant" (p. 144) and could not have
"told him" anything (p. 126), because, accordingto Philo, he lived at the time of the Trojan War.
The period covered by the Ras Shamra texts is
not "c. 1440-1360 B.C." (p. 127) but rather ca.
1380-1194. "The name of the queen HIurai"cannot be compared to that of the Hurrians (p.
154) for phonetic reasons (the latter ethnonymn is
1Iry in Ugaritic). It is not true that "cAthtart
(cAshtart, Astarte) is mentioned in Ugaritictexts only in formulaic phrases and in cultic and
liturgical texts" (p. 147): Ringgren himself (p.
146) quotes an epic poem in which this goddess is
an acting character. The statement about the
Sun-goddess Shapash that "in sacrificial and
similar lists she does not occur at all" (p. 144) is
also wrong. It is impossible to guess the reason
for Ringgren's assertion that "the Aramaic
Sefire inscription . . . contains the text of a state
treaty between three minor princes" (p. 169).
Ringgren introduces in one and the same passage
"Panammuwa of Ya"udi" and "on the otherhand, Kilamuwa of Zenjirli" (p. 170), as thoughYa udi and "Zenjirli" (Zincirli) were two dis-
crete political entities, and on page 135 he
locates "the Kilamuwa inscription" in Phoenicia.
The quoted slips are not the only ones in
Ringgren's book. True, most of them are
marginal and do not affect very deeply the
basic subject of the book, but the author
should have taken greater care of his chrono-
logical, historical, and
geographicalback-
ground data. These inaccuracies could have
easily been detected and weeded out duringthe preparation of the English edition.
MICHAEL C. ASTOUR
Southern Illinois UniversityEdwardsville
Who Were the Amorites? By ALFRED HALDAR.
"University of Uppsala Monographs on the
Ancient Near East," no. 1. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1971. Pp. viii + 93. 25 guilders.In a limited number of unusually wide,
almost square, and closely printed pages,
Alfred Haldar presents a new attempt to
summarize and solve the complicated prob-
lem of Amorites in the ancient Near East.
The first of the book's six chapters, entitled
"Introduction" (pp. 1-5), begins the survey
of written evidence on the Amorites with a
quotation from, of all places, chapter 14 of
Genesis. "I shall not enter upon the mysteries
of the chapter from which a verse was
quoted," says Haldar, "but I simply want to
note the fact that Abram, the Hebrew (i.e.,
the Habiru), reckoned Amorite groups as his
confederates." If the chapter is full of
"mysteries," can any of its statements betaken as a "fact"? There follows a summary
of other Old Testament references to
Amorites, without mentioning the frequently
adduced possibility that the use of the term
"Amorites" in the E and D sources reflects
the contemporaneous Assyro-Babylonian de-
signation of Syria-Palestine as Amurru, and
not a remembrance of the ethnographic situ-
ation in the Bronze Age. Only after this tribute
to the Scripture does Haldar turn to the
testimony of Sumerian and Akkadian texts.
Chapter 2, "Where Was the Land of the
Amorites Situated?" (pp. 6-28), is rather
loosely constructed, with unjustified chrono-
logical and geographical zigzagging. Haldar's
thesis is that Akkadian Amurru derives from
Sumerian Mar.tu, and the latter from the
city name Mari (pp. 19-21); few will acceptthis theory. In the interpretation of the
tantalizingly polyvalent term Mar.tu/Amur-
ru, Haldar adheres to a simplistic solution:
it is a designation of "the 'Westland', i.e.,
the territory between the Euphrates and the
Mediterranean" (p. 27); "The term mar.tu
and its Akkadian equivalent having a purely
geographical significance, they had no ethnic
or linguistic connotations" (p. 27); "From
what has been said, it is sufficiently clear
that all Amorites did not speak a Semitic
language" (p. 28). But earlier (p. 3) he agreesto the existence of "the 'Amorite' language"
(albeitin
quotation marks),and
later (p. 81)he quotes an Ur III text mentioning "an
interpreter of the Amorites." For the sake
of a balanced presentation, Haldar should
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218 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES
have made a reference to an alternative view
of Amurru as originally an ethnonym, de-
rived from the Semitic root mrr, as proposed
by G. Buccellati, The Amorites of the Ur III
Period (1966), pp. 133-34 (see this reviewer's
remarks in JNES 28 [1969]: 223). Then "the
land of the Amorites" would have acquired
its meaning "Westland" through secondary
development (cf. "sea" for "west," "dry
land" for "south," and "lookout point" for
"north" in Hebrew). Otherwise, the chapter
contains a great amount of historical data
relating to early Sumerian and Akkadian
contacts with Syria and to the penetration of
nomadicgroups, usually designated
as
Amorites, into Mesopotamia. Many of the
author's remarks merit attention-for ex-
ample, his doubt about the role of the
Amorites in the late third millennium de-
structions of some Palestinian cities and
Byblos, as postulated by K. Kenyon and M.
Dunand (p. 14). A similar objection to
attaching an ethnic label to mute archaeo-
logical traces has been raised by C. H. J. de
Geus in Ugarit-Forschungen 3 (1971): 41-60.
On the other hand, one also finds in this
chapter inexact statements and poorly
worded, and hence misleading, sentences.
We read, for example, that "finally, Ham-
murabi (in his 32nd, or 33d year) captured
Mari, although Zimri-Lim continued his
reign, until he was defeated by the Kassites"
(p. 20)-surely this statement needs sub-
stantiation-or, "in the Mari texts, the North
Palestinian city Hasor is mentioned, the
center of an important Amorite kingdom"
(p. 21)-the Mari texts do not say that it
was Amorite-or that "from the Amarna
letters it would in any case seem evident that
Canaan and Ugarit were two distinct king-
doms" (p. 28)-a "kingdom of Canaan"
never existed, and speaking of Amarna
letters, one of them (EA 151) does seem to
include Ugarit in Canaan as a wider geogra-
phical entity.
Chapter 3, "Questions Connected with the
Historyof Settlement"
(pp. 29-42),involves
the author in lengthy discussions of pre-
historic human settlements in such divergent
areas as Anatolia, Cyprus, Kurdistan, Balu-
chistan, ancient Sumer, and such high
epochs as "11,000 to 9,000 years ago" (p. 33)
and even "somewhere between 44,400 and
28,500" (p. 35). Only on page 40 does Haldar
announce that "we will return to Syria," and
the remaining three pages of the chapter are
the only ones that are related to the basic
topic of the book.
Chapter 4, "Reasons for Discontinuity of
Settlement" (pp. 43-50), is largely devoted
to the theory of climatic changes in the Near
East as the driving force behind population
shifts and large-scale nomadic invasions.
Haldar presents a fairly comprehensive sum-
mary of recent statementsby experts
in
palaeoclimatology, and he cautiously accepts
the link between dessication of steppe areas
and such historical events as the overthrow of
the Ur III Dynasty by the Amorites (p. 49).
But this theory is subject to serious doubt.
The period of prolonged abnormal aridity is
believed to have lasted from 2300 to 2000
B.C. (see A. D. Crown, JNES 31 [1972]: 312-
30), which agrees well with the crisis of urban
life in Palestine; but nothing of the kind
occurred in Syria, where all excavated sites,even those located near the desert fringe,
show intensive and uninterrupted occupation
during that very period. This has been pointed
out by M. van Loon (AJA 73 [1969]: 276-77)on the basis of the Danish excavations at
Hama and his own at Salankahiyah on the
Euphrates; the same is true for the nearby
HIabbfibah el-Kabirah (E. Heinrich et al.,MDOG 101 [1969]: 27-67; 102 [1970]: 27-85),and for Tell Mardih (reports of the Italian
Archaeological Mission in Syria, 1964, 1965,and 1966). Haldar, whose acquaintance with
the important excavations at Tell Mardih is
limited to the first preliminary report of the
director, P. Matthiae (AAS 15, vol. 2 [1965],
pp. 83-100), draws from it a one-sided con-
clusion: "[I]t is evident that there were
reasons for people's migrations away from
the areas under the menace, and to them
belonged, for instance, the region south and
east[sic]
ofAleppo, where, according to the
excavator, shortage of water was the cause
of the region being abandoned" (p. 47). But
on page 41 he quotes Matthiae as having said
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BOOKREVIEWS 219
of the assumed depopulation of Tell Mardih
in the first half of the second millennium B.C.
that "il pourrait s'agir de guerres ou bien de
causes naturelles telles que le dissechement
des puits"-a far less categoric statement;
and in the light of the subsequent campaigns,
Matthiae declared, "It is unlikely, however,
that the site was ever completely abandoned
for any length of time" (Archaeology 24
[1971]: 60).
Chapters 5, "The Amorites as a Problem
in the History of Settlement" (pp. 51-66),
and 6, "The Amorites' Position in Society"
(pp. 67-83), are probably the best written
in the book. The book ends with a "Post-
script" (pp. 84-86), dated April 11, 1971,
which adds some linguistic remarks. There
are also indexes of "Modern Authors" and
of "Selected Names." The former contains
145 names; nevertheless, Haldar's bibliog-
raphy is not satisfactory even for a small
book on a very wide subject. There are some
important studies which should not have been
omitted in a book which is largely built on
setting forth and commenting upon the
opinions of other authors. Missing are, interalia, I. J. Gelb, La lingua degli Amoriti,
Rendiconti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei
Lincei, vol. 13 (1958), pp. 143-64; S. Moscati,
The Semites in Ancient History: An Inquiry
Into the Settlement of the Beduin and Their
Political Establishment (1959); J.-R. Kupper,
"Le r6le des nomades dans l'histoire de la
M'sopotamie ancienne," JESHO 5 (1959):
113-25; M. Liverani, "Variazioni climatiche
e fluttuazioni demografiche nella storia
siriana," Oriens Antiquus 7 (1968): 77-89;
idem, "Per una considerazione storica del
problema amoreo," Oriens Antiquus 9 (1970):
5-27; and the three volumes of Missione
Archeologica Italiana in Siria, published in
1965, 1966, and 1967. Gaps in Haldar's
documentation sometimes lead him to erro-
neous assertions, such as, "when 17 early
Assyrian kings are said to have lived in tents,
they may rather be characterized as warriors
than as nomads" (p. 52). Had Haldar used
F. R. Kraus's-nige, die in"Zelten wohnten,
Mededelingen der Koninklyke Nederlandse
Akademie, vol. 28 (1965), pp. 123-40, and
J. J. Finkelstein's "The Genealogy of the
Hammurapi Dynasty," JCS 20 (1966): 95-
118, he would not have made such a state-
ment. The genealogical tablet published and
interpreted by Finkelstein is of exceptional
interest for the Amorite problem in more ways
than one; it shows what Amorite kings
themselves thought of their tribal origin, and
how they understood the term Amurru.
Haldar still believes that "dawidum ... was
probably a military leader" (p. 59), ignoring
the investigation of that expression by
Kupper, Les Nomades en Mesopotamie au
temps des rois de Mari, pp. 60-62, B. Lands-
berger apud
H. Tadmor, JNES 17 (1958):
130, and Gelb, JNES 20 (1960): 194-96,
which made it certain that dawdam (sic) ddku
simply means "to inflict a defeat." He repeats
the obsolete etymology of Nuhasse as "Cop-
per Land" (p. 74), which is absolutely ex-
cluded by the Egyptian and Ugaritic spellings
of that geographical name, as pointed out
by Liverani in Mlissione Archeologica (1964),
p. 128, n. 91.
To conclude, Haldar has not succeeded in
ascertaining "who were the Amorites" be-yond what has already been known, but this
is not entirely his fault. His book has its
shortcomings, but if used with caution, it
can serve as a fairly comprehensive and even
stimulating introduction to one of the crucial
problems of ancient Near Eastern history.
MICHAEL C. AsTOUR
Southern Illinois UniversityEdwardsville
Technical Arabic. By VERNON DAYKIN.
London: Lund Humphries, Ltd., 1972.
Pp. 131. ?2.75.
In the foreword to the Oxford English-
Arabic Dictionary, N. S. Doniach mentions
in his acknowledgements that "for close on
two years the project had the services of
Vernon Daykin for three days a week, who
divided his time between help in the English
and checking certain aspects of the Arabic."
Evidently, Mr. Daykin spent the other four
days of his week during those years carefully
compiling and translating this very neat little
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