Amorite language

Amorite language

language
name=Amorite
states=ancient Mesopotamia, by the Amorites
extinct=2nd millennium BC
familycolor=Afro-Asiatic
fam2=Semitic
fam3=West Semitic
fam4=Central Semitic
fam5=Northwest Semitic

Amorite is an early Northwest Semitic language, spoken by the Amorite tribes prominent in early Near Eastern history. It is known exclusively from non-Akkadian proper names recorded by Akkadian scribes during periods of Amorite rule in Babylonia (end of the 3rd and beginning of the 1st millennium), notably from Mari, and to a lesser extent Alalakh, Tell Harmal, and Khafajah. Occasionally such names are also found in early Egyptian texts; and one place-name — "Snir" (שְׂנִיר) for Mount Hermon — is known from the Bible (Deut. 3:9). Notable characteristics include:

* The usual Semitic imperfect-perfect distinction is found — e.g. "Yantin-Dagan", 'Dagon gives' ("ntn"); "Raṣa-Dagan", 'Dagon was pleased' (rṣy). It included a 3rd-person suffix -"a" (unlike Akkadian or Hebrew), and an imperfect vowel -"a"-, as in Arabic rather than the Hebrew and Aramaic -"i"-.
* There was a verb form with a geminate second consonant — e.g. "Yabanni-Il", 'God creates' (root "bny").
* In several cases where Akkadian has "š", Amorite, like Hebrew and Arabic, has "h", thus "hu" 'his', -"haa" 'her', causative "h-" or "ʔ"- (I. Gelb 1958).
* The 1st-person perfect is in -"ti" (singular), -"nu" (plural), as in the Canaanite languages.

ources

*D. Cohen, "Les langues chamito-semitiques", CNRS: Paris 1985.
*I. Gelb, "La lingua degli amoriti", "Academia Nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti" 1958, no. 8, 13, pp. 143-163.
*H. B. Huffmon. "Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts. A Structural and Lexical Study", Baltimore 1965.
*Remo Mugnaioni. "Notes pour servir d’approche à l’amorrite" Travaux 16 – "La sémitologie aujourd’hui", Cercle de Linguistique d’Aix-en-Provence, Centre des sciences du langage, Aix-en-Provence 2000, p. 57-65.
*M. P. Streck, Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit. Band 1: Die Amurriter, Die onomastische Forschung, Orthographie und Phonologie, Nominalmorphologie. Alter Orient und Altes Testament Band 271/1, Münster 2000.


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