Amurru

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Amurru

Amurru (or Martu) are names given in Akkadian

Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
and Sumerian

Sumerian language

Sumerian was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian language as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC , but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia...
texts to the god of the Amorite

Amorite

Amorite refers to a Semitic language people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. The term Amurru refers to them, as well as to their principal deity....
/Amurru people, often forming part of personal names. He is sometimes called Ilu
Dingir

Dingir is the Sumerian language for "deity". It is written as an ideogram in the cuneiform script . The sign at the same time expressed the syllable an, because it was in particular the ideogram for Anu, the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon....
Amurru (DINGIR ^DMAR.TU).

god Amurru/Martu is sometimes described as a 'shepherd', and as a son of the sky-god Anu. He is sometimes called bêlu šadi or bêl šadê, 'lord of the mountain'; dúr-hur-sag-gá sikil-a-ke, 'He who dwells on the pure mountain'; and kur-za-gan ti-[la], 'who inhabits the shining mountain'.

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Encyclopedia

Amurru (or Martu) are names given in Akkadian

Akkadian language

Sumerian language

Amorite

Description

This god Amurru/Martu is sometimes described as a 'shepherd', and as a son of the sky-god Anu. He is sometimes called bêlu šadi or bêl šadê, 'lord of the mountain'; dúr-hur-sag-gá sikil-a-ke, 'He who dwells on the pure mountain'; and kur-za-gan ti-[la], 'who inhabits the shining mountain'. In Cappadocia

Cappadocia

Cappadocia, Wikipedia:IPA for English /k?p?'do???/ , was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor . The name continued to be used in western sources and in the Christianity tradition throughout history and is still widely used as an international Tourism in Turkey concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders characterized by...
n Zincirli inscriptions he is called ì-li a-bi-a, 'the god of my father'.

Accordingly, it has been suggested by L. R. Bailey (1968) and Jean Ouelette (1969), that this Bêl Šadê might be the same as the Biblical ’El Šaddai who is the God

Names of God in Judaism

In Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title. It represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relation of God to the Jewish people....
of Abraham

Abraham

Abraham is a man featured in the Book of Genesis and an important figure in several monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions regard him as the founding Patriarchs of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomite peoples....
, Isaac

Isaac

According to the Hebrew Bible, Isaac The New Testament contains few references to Isaac. The Early Christianity views Abraham's willingness to follow God's command to Binding of Isaac as an example of faith and obedience....
, and Jacob

Jacob

According to the Hebrew Bible, Jacob , also known as Israel , was the third Biblical patriarchs and the ancestor of the twelve Israelites....
in the "Priestly source

Priestly source

The Priestly Source is posited as the most recent of the four chief sources of the Torah, as postulated by the long-established "standard" Wellhausen formulation of the Documentary Hypothesis ....
" of narrative, according to the documentary hypothesis

Documentary hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis is the proposal that the first five books of the Old Testament represent a combination of documents from originally independent sources....
. It is possible that Šaddai means 'He of the mountains' or even 'the breasted God' as early iconography of Yahweh at Kuntilet Arjud shows him to have been hermaphroditic (possessing both breasts and male genitals). Alternately, Bêl Šadê could have been the fertility-god 'Ba'al', possibly adopted by the Canaan

Canaan

Canaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt....
ites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the Hebrew

Hebrews

Hebrews are an ancient people defined as descendants of biblical Patriarch Abraham , a descendent of Noah.In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is referred to a single time as the ivri, which is the singular form of the Hebrew-language word for Hebrew ....
prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet is a person who has claimed to have encountered the supernatural or the Divinity, often one who serves as an intermediary with humanity....
Elijah

Elijah (prophet)

Elijah or Elias meaning "Yahweh is God" was a prophet in kingdom of Israel in the 9th century BCE. He appears in the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Mishnah, Christian Bible, and the Qur'an....
.

Amurru also has storm-god features. Like Adad

Adad

Adad in Akkadian language and Ishkur in Sumerian language are the names of the storm-god in the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon, both usually written by the logogram dIM....
, Amurru bears the epithet raman 'thunderer', and he is even called bariqu 'hurler of the thunderbolt' and Adad ša a-bu-be 'Adad of the deluge'. Yet his iconography is distinct from that of Adad, and he sometimes appears alongside Adad with a baton of power or throwstick, while Adad bears a conventional thunderbolt.

Wife

Amurru's wife is sometimes the goddess Ašratum (see Asherah
Asherah

Asherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian language writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittites as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu....
) who in northwest Semitic tradition and Hittite tradition appears as wife of the god El
El (god)

is the Northwest Semitic languages word for "deity" , cognate to Arabic and Akkadian .In the Canaanite religion, or Levantine religion as a whole, El or Il was the supreme god, the father of humankind and all creatures and the husband of the Goddess Asherah as attested in the tablets of Ugarit....
which suggests that Amurru may indeed have been a variation of that god. If Amurru was identical with El, it would explain why so few Amorite names are compounded with the name Amurru, but so many are compounded with Il; that is, with El.

Another tradition about Amurru's wife (or one of Amurru's wives) gives her name as Belit-Seri, 'Lady of the Desert'.

A third tradition appears in a Sumerian poem in pastoral style, which relates how the god Martu came to marry Adg~ar-kidug the daughter of the god Numushda of the city of Inab. It contains a speech expressing urbanite Sumerian disgust at uncivilized, nomadic Amurru life which Adg~ar-kidug ignores, responding only: "I will marry Martu!".