Sargon erected an image of himself by the shore of the sea, and seems even to have received tribute from Cyprus.

Colonies of "Amorite" or Canaanitish merchants settled in Babylonia for the purposes of trade, and there obtained various rights and privileges; and a cadastral survey of southern Babylonia made at the time mentions "the governor of the land of the Amorites." The Amorites, however, though they were the dominant people of Syria, were not its original inhabitants; nor, it is probable, did they even form the largest part of its population.

They were essentially the inhabitants of the mountains, as we are told in the Book of Numbers (xiii.

29), and appear to have come from the west.

We have learnt a good deal about them from the Egyptian monuments, where the "Amurru" or Amorites are depicted with that fidelity to nature which characterised the art of ancient Egypt.