Free The Oxford History of the Biblical World by Michael D. Coogan Page B

number of archives have been discovered in cities of Syria and northern Mesopotamia that provide considerable insight into the political, social, economic, and religious situation in Syria and, to a lesser degree, Palestine. The incomparable texts from Mari on the middle Euphrates River have shed light on an important forty-year period of Syro-Mesopotamian history during the late nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Mari tablets have been supplemented by smaller contemporary or near contemporary archives from other sites in the region, including Tell er-Rimah, Tell Asmar, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, Terqa, Tell Shemshara, and Tell Leilan. These sources show that Syria during the Middle Bronze Age formed a critical component of the political and cultural situation in the Near East, comparable in importance to the states of Mesopotamia during the same period. They also illuminate the two great empires of the Middle Bronze Age, that of Shamshi-Adad I, who controlled all of Upper Mesopotamia for twenty to thirty years, and that of Hammurapi (Hammurabi) of Babylon, who brought all of Mesopotamia under his sway.
    The Middle Bronze Age in northern Syria and Mesopotamia has been called the age of the Amorite kingdoms. Most of the states in these regions were ruled during this era by kings whose names belong to a language called Amorite, a Northwest Semitic tongue that most likely originated in northeastern Syria.
    The Amorites were a large and complex group of peoples, and their origins and spread across the Near East are only partially understood. Earlier studies of the Amorites tended to portray them as primarily nomadic tribespeople, sweeping in from the steppe land that borders the great Syrian desert, attacking the urban centers of Mesopotamia, and eventually bringing down Neo-Sumerian culture at the end of the third millennium. Following their triumph, so it was said, the crude Amorites found themselves overwhelmed by the advanced culture they had subdued, and they began to settle down and develop into city-dwellers. It is now clear that this portrait is distorted. Although there was a substantial pastoralist, seminomadic element among the Amorites, large portions of the tribes were sedentary folk, living both in agricultural villages and in the larger urban centers. By the mid-third millennium, in fact, considerable numbers of Amorites had migrated south into Mesopotamia, settling in the cities and becoming established yet distinct members of Mesopotamian society. The collapse of Neo-Sumerian culture cannot be attributed entirely, nor perhaps even largely, to invasions of nomadic Amorites; many other factors played a role in this decline. The Amorite clans who eventually gained dominance over various cities were those that had long since been fully urbanized and already had a substantial power base in the cities.
    When written sources begin to appear toward the end of the nineteenth century BCE , most of the major cities of Mesopotamia and northern Syria were ruled by kings with Amorite names. Many of the cities that had played major roles in the Early Bronze Age were replaced by new cities that assumed political dominance.
    The great archives of Mari supply the foundation for our understanding of Syria and Mesopotamia during the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE . These archives were recovered from the ruins of the palace of Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari before its destruction by Hammurapi of Babylon about 1760 BCE . The palace itself was an extraordinary building, sprawling over about 2.5 hectares (6 acres) and boasting more than 260 rooms, courtyards, and corridors on the ground level, as well as an undetermined number on the second floor. In this enormous building culminated centuries of construction that had begun in the late third millennium. Reports of its splendor spread widely in the Near East.
    But more significant than the ruins of the palace for the study of Syro-Palestinian history and culture are