ose modern descendants
are the Kabyles and other Berber tribes of Northern Africa. The latter
are not only European in type, they claim special affinities to the
blond, "golden-haired" Kelt. And their tall stature agrees well with
what the Old Testament has to tell us about the Amorites. They too were
classed among the Rephaim or "giants," by the side of whom the Israelite
invaders were but as "grasshoppers."

While the Canaanites inhabited the lowlands, the highlands were the seat
of the Amorites (Num. xiii. 29). This, again, is in accordance with
their European affinities. They flourished best in the colder and more
bracing climate of the mountains, as do the Berber tribes of Northern
Africa to-day. The blond, blue-eyed race is better adapted to endure the
cold than the heat.

Amorite tribes and kingdoms were to be found in all parts of Palestine.
Southward, as we have seen, Kadesh-barnea was in "the mountain of the
Amorites," while Chedor-laomer found them on the western shores of the
Dead Sea. When Abraham pitched his tent in the plain above Hebron, it
was in the possession of three Amorite chieftains, and at the time of
the Israelitish conquest, Hebron and Jerusalem, Jarmuth, Lachish and
Eglon were all Amorite (Josh. x. 5). Jacob assured Joseph the
inheritance of his tribe should be in that district of Shechem which the
patriarch had taken "out of the hand of the Amorite" (Gen. xlviii. 22),
and on the eastern side of the Jordan were the Amorite kingdoms of Og
and Sihon. But we learn from the Egyptian inscriptions, and more
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,