The Amorites in Babylonia have already been referred to in Chap. V., and from that part of the present work it will easily be understood that they were an extensive and powerful nationality, capable, with organization, of extending their power, as they evidently did from time to time, far and wide. Indeed, as has been pointed out, there is great probability that the Babylonian dynasty called by Berosus Arabic, was in reality Amorite. In any case, the kings of this dynasty held sway over Amoria, as the inscription of Ammi-ṭitana, translated on p. 155, clearly shows. The importance of this nationality in the eyes of the Babylonians is proved by the fact that their designation for “west” was “the land of Amurrū,” and the west wind was, even with the Assyrians, “the wind of the land of Amurrū” (though the Hittites, in Assyrian times, seem to have been the more powerful nation), and this designation of the western point of the compass probably long outlived the renown of the nationality from which the expression was derived. Among other Biblical passages, testifying to the power of the Amorites, may be quoted as typical Amos ii. 9, 10, and in this the Babylonian and the Hebrew records are quite in agreement. As has been pointed out by Prof. Sayce, in process of time a great many tribes—Gibeonites, Hivites, Jebusites, and even Hittites—were classed as Amorites by the ancient Jewish writers, a circumstance which likewise testifies to the power of the nationality. These identifications must be to a large extent due to the fact that all the tribes or nationalities referred to were mountaineers, and, as we have seen (p. 122), the Akkadian character for a mountainous region or nationality, stood not only for Armenia, and the land of the Amorites, but also for the land of Akkad, because the Akkadians came from a mountainous country, perhaps somewhere in the neighbourhood of the mountains of Elam. This character was pronounced Ari when it stood for Amoria, but ceased to be used for that on account of its signifying also the mountainous region of Armenia, and Akkad, for which it still continued to be employed, and it is only the context, in many cases, which enables the reader to gather which is meant. Other groups used for Amoria were the sign for foot, twice over (sometimes with one of them reversed), [Cuneiform], and [Cuneiform], the ordinary pronunciation of which is Saršar, though it is probable that the latter was pronounced, in Akkadian, like the former, _i.e._ Tidnu. In the inscriptions of Gudea, viceroy of Lagaš about 2700 B.C., there occurs the name of a country called Tidalum, “a mountain of Martu,” from which a kind of limestone was brought. This Hommel and Sayce regard as another form of Tidnu, by the interchange of _l_ and _n_, which is not uncommon in Akkadian. The fact that Martu is also used in the inscriptions for Amurrū, (the land of) the Amorites, and also, with the prefix for divinity, for