Amurru and
Martu are names given in
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
and
SumerianSumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
texts to the god of the
AmoriteAmorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...
/Amurru people, often forming part of personal names. He is sometimes called
IluDingir is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "D" as in e.g. DInanna...
Amurru (
DDingir is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "D" as in e.g. DInanna...
MAR.TU). He was the patron god of the Mesopotamian city of Ninab, whose exact location is unknown.
Description
Amurru/Martu was probably a western
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
god originally. He is sometimes described as a 'shepherd' or as a storm god, and as a son of the sky-god Anu. He is sometimes called
bêlu šadī 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
CappadociaCappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia, largely in Nevşehir Province.In the time of Herodotus, the Cappadocians were reported as occupying the whole region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine...
n Zinčirli 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
’Ēl ŠaddāiEl Shaddai [shah-'dah-yy] is one of the Judaic names of God, with its etymology coming from the influence of the Ugaritic religion on modern Judaism. El Shaddai is conventionally translated as God Almighty...
who is the
GodIn Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title; it represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relationship of God to the Jewish people and to the world. To demonstrate the sacredness of the names of God, and as a means of showing respect and reverence for...
of
AbrahamAbraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
,
IsaacIsaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...
, and
JacobJacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...
in the "
Priestly sourceThe Priestly Source is one of the sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the bible. Primarily a product of the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire , P was written to show that even when all seemed lost, God remained present with Israel...
" of narrative, according to the
documentary hypothesisThe documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
.
Bêl Šadê could have been the fertility-god 'Ba'al', possibly adopted by the
CanaanCanaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the
HebrewHebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...
prophetIn religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
ElijahElijah also Elias ; , meaning "Yahweh is my God";Arabic:إلياس, Ilyās), was a prophet in the Kingdom of Samaria during the reign of Ahab , according to the Books of Kings....
.
Amurru also has storm-god features. Like
AdadAdad in Akkadian and Ishkur in Sumerian and Hadad in Aramaic are the names of the storm-god in the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon. All three are usually written by the logogram dIM...
, Amurru bears the epithet
ramān 'thunderer', and he is even called
bāriqu '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
AsherahAsherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu...
) who in northwest Semitic tradition and Hittite tradition appears as wife of the god
Ēl which suggests that Amurru may indeed have been a variation of that god. If Amurru was identical with Ēl, it would explain why so few Amorite names are compounded with the name
Amurru, but so many are compounded with
Il; that is, with Ēl.
Another tradition about Amurru's wife (or one of Amurru's wives) gives her name as Belit-Sheri, 'Lady of the Desert'.
A third tradition appears in a Sumerian poem in pastoral style, which relates how the god Martu came to marry Adg̃ar-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 Adg̃ar-kidug ignores, responding only: "I will marry Martu!".