especially from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the chief seat of
Amorite power lay immediately to the north of Palestine. Here was "the
land of the Amorites," to which frequent reference is made by the
monuments, among the ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, from Hamath
southward to Hermon. On the east it was bounded by the desert, on the
west by the cities of Phoenicia.

In early days, long before the age of Abraham, the Amorites must already
have been the predominant population in this part of Syria. When the
Babylonian king, Sargon of Akkad, carried his victorious arms to the
shores of the Mediterranean, it was against "the land of the Amorites"
that his campaigns were directed. From that time forward this was the
name under which Syria, and more particularly Canaan, was known to the
Babylonians. The geographical extension of the term was parallel to that
of "Hittites" among the Assyrians, of "Canaan" among the Israelites, and
of "Palestine" among ourselves. But it bears witness to the important
part which was played by the Amorites in what we must still call the
prehistoric age of Syria, as well as to the extent of the area which
they must have occupied.

Of course it does not follow that the whole of this area was occupied at
one and the same time. Indeed we know that the conquest of the northern
portion of Moab by the Amorite king Sihon took place only a short time
before the Israelitish invasion, and part of the Amorite song of triumph
on the occasion has been preserved in the Book of Numbers. "There is a
fire gone out of Heshbon," it said, "a flame from the city of Sihon: it
hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woe
to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his
sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of
the Amorites." (Num. xxi. 28, 29.) In the south, again, the Amorites do