approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean
marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one
denomination--Martu, Amurru,** the West--but there were distinctive
names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.

* The most ancient cuneiform tablets of Syrian origin are
not older than the XVIth century before our era; they
contain the official, correspondence of the native princes
with the Pharaohs Amenôthes III. and IV. of the XVIIIth
dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were
discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at Tel el-
Amarna in Egypt.

** Formerly read Akharru. Martu would be the Sumerian and
Akharru the Semitic form, Akharru meaning _that which is
behind_. The discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets threw
doubt on the reading of the name Akharru: some thought that
it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less
certainty, think that it should be replaced by Amuru,
Amurru, the country of the Amorites. But the question has
now been settled by Babylonian contract and law tablets of
the period of Khaminurabi, in which the name is written _A-
mu-ur-ri (ki)_. Hommel originated the idea that Martu might
be an abbreviation of Amartu, that is, Amar with the
feminine termination of nouns in the Canaanitish dialect:
Martu would thus actually signify _the country of the
Amorites_.

Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria,
Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their