white, the nose straight and regular, the forehead high, and the lips thin.  They wore whiskers and a pointed beard, and dressed in long robes furnished with a sort of cape.  Their physical characteristics are those of the Libyan neighbours of the Egyptians on the west, the forefathers of the fair-skinned and blue-eyed Kabyles or Berbers who inhabit the mountains of northern Africa to-day.  Anthropologists connect these Libyans with the Kelts of our own islands.  At one time, it would seem, a Kelto-Libyan race existed, which spread along the northern coast of Africa to western Europe and the British Isles.  The Amorites would appear to have been an eastern offshoot of the same race.

Wherever they went, the members of the race buried their dead in rude stone cairns or cromlechs, the dolmens of the French antiquarians.  We find them in Britain and France, in the Spanish peninsula, and the north of Africa.  They are also found in Palestine, more especially in that portion of it which was the home of the Amorites.  The skulls found in the cairns are for the most part of the dolichocephalic or long-headed type; this too is the shape of skull characteristic of the modern Kabyle, and it has been portrayed for us by the Egyptian artists in the pictures of their Amorite foes.

In the days of the Egyptian artists—­the age of the Eighteenth and two following dynasties (B.C. 1600-1200)—­the special seat of the Amorites was the mountainous district immediately to the north of Palestine.  But Amorite kingdoms were established elsewhere on both sides of the Jordan.  Not long before the Israelitish invasion, the Amorite king Sihon had robbed Moab of its territory and founded his power on the ruins of that of the Egyptian empire.  Farther north, in the plateau of Bashan, another Amorite king, Og, had his capital, while Amorite tribes were settled on the western side of the Jordan, in the mountains of southern Canaan, where the tribe of Judah subsequently established itself.  We even hear of Amorites in the mountain-block of Kadesh-barnea, in the desert south of Canaan; and the Amorite type of face, as it has been depicted for us on the monuments of Egypt, may still be often observed among the Arab tribes of the district between Egypt and Palestine.

Jerusalem, Ezekiel tells us, had an Amorite as well as a Hittite parentage, and Jacob declares that he had taken his heritage at Shechem out of the hand of the Amorite with his sword and bow.  It must be remembered, however, that the term “Amorite” is sometimes used in the Old Testament in its Babylonian sense, as denoting an inhabitant of Canaan, whatever might be the race to which he belonged; we cannot always infer from it the nationality or race of those to whom it is applied.  Moreover, individual branches of the Amorite stock had names of their own.  In the north they were known as Hivites, at Hebron they were called Anakim, at Jerusalem they were Jebusites.  The Amorite kings of Bashan are described as Rephaim, a word which the Authorised Version translates “giants.”  It was only on the northern frontier of Palestine and in the kingdom of Sihon that the name of “Amorite” alone was used.