Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/497

Rh AMRAPHEL 441 AMSTERDAM The Syrian liouses in the region of Hauran were inhabited, from the third century to the seventh, by the upper and raitidle classes of the jxipulation. A house of this kind in perfect preservation is still to be seen at Anirah. It is a huge dwelling built round three sitles of a eourtyaril. The chief room is a great hall running to the height of two stories. Kach of the bedrooms on the giound floor, which were three in number, had a kind of small dais covered by a higldy ornamented, semicircular canopy, and forming an alcove. A closet, adjoining the room, had cupboards all round it, taken out of the thickness of the walls, and divided by slabs of stone. The house at Amrah had a story which was reached by an exterior staircase. The floor, which serves as ceiling to the ground floor, is made of flagstones resting on arches or on corbels fastened to the wall, and the stone doors turn on stone hinges. In this house, is in other Syrian houses, a large, central hall was the most honourable part of the dwelling, where family meetings were held, and the stranger who was allowed to enter it was as greatly favoured as the guest whom a Roman admitted to his (ire- side. At the present tlay this house ha.s foimil care- takers among the natives them.selves. It was found suitable for a quick and inexpensive fitting-up, and the sheikh of the village of Douma has made it his home. The women and children (the harem) live exclusively in the upper story, the sheikh's admin- istrative functions are carried on in the grouiul- floor rooms, while the great hall has been kept for its ancient uses. VoGiE, Syne CcntraU (Paris, 1865); DE BEYLtE, Vhabita- tion byzantine (Paris, 1902). H. Leclercq. Amraphel, King of Sennaar (Shinar), or Baby- lonia, one of the four Mesopotamian kings — the other three being .rloch. King of Pontus (Kllasar); Choilorlahomor, King of Klam, and Thadal (Tedal), King of Nations (Goijim) — who, according to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, jointly invaded Chanaan and defeated the five kings of the Plains, capturing Lot and his family, together with a rich booty. On their way home they were assailed and routed in a single night by Abraham and his 318 men in the vale of Save (Siddim), near the Dead Sea. Among the rescued prisoners were Lot and his family. Abraham, furthermore, while on his way back from his victorious attack, was met by Melchise- dech, the High-Priest of El-Elion, at Jerusalem, who celebrated Abraham's victory by a thanksgiving offering of bread and wnne, taking from him, as his sacerdotal share, the tenth part of the booty. To Biblical scholars and theol<igians the personality of Amraphel is of considerable interest, owing to the fact that he has been long ago identified by the majority of Assyriologists and Biblical critics with the great Babylonian king, Hammurabi, the sixth monarch of the first Babylonian dynasty, who reigned about 2250 n. c. This ruler's famous Code of Laws, the oldest code of laws in the workl, was discovered in 1901-2, in Susa, the ancient capital of Elam, by the Trench archa-ological expedition, and was for the first time deciphered and translated by the French Dominican scholar. Father Scheil. of Paris. The identity of .mraphel and Hammurabi is now unanimously accepted by As-syriologists and Biblical critics. Phonetically, the two names are identical. The variants of the secon<l form are .Ammi-rabi, Ammurapi, and Hammum-rabi, etc. Hamniu. or Ammu. was in all probability the name of a god, as it is found in many compound names such as Smnu- hammu, Jasdi-hammu. and Zimri-hammu. The cle- ment rabi is very common in Babylonia, and it means "great"; the full name, consequently, means "The god .mmu is great", on the same analogy as names like Sin-rabi, Samas-rabi, and many others. According to Dr. Lindle, followed by Sayce and others, thename was also pronounced Ammurabi, and, as Dr. Pinches was the first to point out, the form Ammu-rapi is also met with by the side of Hammu- rabi, and like many of the Baoylonian kings of that period he was deified, being addresseil as Uu-Ammu- rabi or Aminuratti-ilu, i. e. "Ammurabi the god", ilu being the emiivalent of the Hebrew El, which means "god". Now Ammurabi-ilu or Ammurapilu is letter for letter the .mraphel, or Amrapel, of Gene- sis. According to another hypothesis, suggested by Dr. Husing, the I at the end of the form "Amraphel" is superfluous, for he would join it to the next word, and read: ".Aind it came to pass in the days of Amraphel. as Arioch king of EUasar was over Slunar, that Chodorlahomer ..." Another, and according to Dr. Pinches perhaps more likely, ex- planation is that this additional letter I is due to a faulty reading of a variant writing of the name, with a polyphonous character having the value of pit, as well as bi, which form may, in fact, still be found. But whichever hypothesis we adopt, tlie identity of Amraphel and Hammurabi is phonetically beyond, dispute. The political situation presupposed in Gen., xiv, reflects, furthermore, with a remarkable degree of probability, tlie condition of the times of Hammu- rabi's reign. The leader of the force and the suzerain to whom the Chanaanitish princes were subject, was a king of IClam. Ehim, therefore, must have been the predominant power at the time, and the Baby- lonian king must have been its va.ssal. The narra- tive, nevertheless, is dated in the reign of the Baby- lonian king, and not in that of the I'iing of Elam, and it is to the reign of the I'.abylonian king that the events described in it are attached. Babylonia, however, was not a united country; there was an- other king, Arioch of EUa.sar, who diviiled with the Amraphel of Sennaar the government of it, and, like Amraphel, acknowledged the supremacy of Elam. Finally, the "nations" (joi/im), whoever they were, were also subject to Elam, as well as the distant province of Chanaan. If we turn our glance to the political condition of Hammurabi's times and period, we shall find that the contemporary monuments of Babylonia are in perfect accord with the .situation presupposed by Gen., xiv. OcssANl in New York Review (Aug. -Sept., 1906), 204- LM3, with full bibliography. G.VBRIEL OuSS.NI. Amsterdam, the capital, and second resitlcntial city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, lies, in a semi-circle, on the Ij (Wye), the southwestern part of the Zuidcrsee, at the mouth of the Ainstel, and is joined to the North .Sea by the Nordseck Canal, constructed between 1865 and 1S79. An estimate in 1S99 gave the population as 510,853, with 120,701 Catholics and 59,060 Jews; that of 1906 gives a total of 548,000, with over 122,000 Catholics. The origin of the city dates from the year 1204, when Gijsbrecht II, Lord of the Amstel, built a fortress on this spot. A considerable settlement soon grew up around it, which, in 1296, came into the possession of the Count of Holland. In 1301, it was raised to the rank of a city, and grew prosiwrous through the influx of large mnnbers of merchants from Brabant and Flanders. The Church life, also, of the city developed on a large scale; at the end of the fiftixMith century there were more than twenty monasteries in it, only one of which, however, the B^guinage, hius survived the storm of the Reforma- tion in its original form. Of the churches and chapels, the so-called "Holy Room" is the most famous, as the scene of a great sacramental miracle, the "Miracle of .msterdam". It w!is a place re- sorted to by countless pilgrims, among others by