The early history of the HebrewsSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
The early history of the Hebrews
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jews -- History -- To 953 B.C.
It would seem that the Amorite race,
fair and tall and energetic, once extended along the northern coast of
Africa into Asia itself, where they occupied the larger part of Southern
Syria. There they have left behind them cromlechs and dolmens which
remind us of those of our own islands. Indeed, if the Amorite were the
eastern branch of the Libyan race, it is probable that he could claim
kindred with the so-called red Kelt of Britain. The physiological
characteristics of the Libyan and fair-haired Kelt are similar; and many
anthropologists assume the existence of a Libyo-Keltic or ‘Eurafrican’
family, which has spread northward through Spain and the western side of
France into the British Isles.[58]
The Emim and Zamzummim, accordingly, whom the descendants of Lot partly
expelled, partly absorbed, may have been of Amorite origin, and
connected in race with a portion of the population of our own country.
At all events, when the Israelites entered Canaan, the Amorites were
already settled on the eastern side of the Jordan. At that time the land
was divided between the Amalekites or Bedâwin of the desert to the
south, the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites ‘in the mountains,’ and the
Canaanites on the coast of the Mediterranean and in the valley of the
Jordan (Numb. xiii. 29). As might have been expected in the case of a
fair-skinned people, the Amorites needed the bracing air of the
mountains in order to hold their own against the other populations of
the country; in the hot plains their vigour was in danger of being lost.
The Egyptian rule, which the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth
dynasties had maintained eastward of the Jordan, passed away with the
fall of the Egyptian empire, and its place was taken by the Amorite
kingdoms of Sihon and Og. Sihon had overthrown the Moabites in battle,
and had wrested their territory from them as far south as the Arnon
(Numb. xxi. 26). They had been driven out of their cities into the
barren mountains which overlooked the Dead Sea. A fragment of the
Amorite Song of Triumph which recorded the conquest has been preserved
to us. ‘Come unto Heshbon,’ it said, ‘let the city of Sihon be built and
fortified. For a fire has gone forth from Heshbon, a flame from the city
of Sihon; it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the Baalim of the high places
of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh:
[Chemosh] hath given his sons that escaped [the battle], and his
daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites’ (Numb. xxi.
27-29).
The southern half of Ammon also, as far north as the Jabbok, was in
Amorite hands. Here, however, the Ammonites had strongly fortified their
‘border’ (Numb. xxi. 24), so that neither Sihon himself, nor his
Israelitish conquerors, succeeded in passing it. But Rabbah, ‘the city
of waters,’ the future capital of Ammon, must have been held by the
Amorites, and the two intrusive populations of Ammon and Moab were
separated from one another by the Amorite conquest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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