AMALEKITES, an ancient people, widely spread throughout the country lying on the south and east of Palestine, often mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, and celebrated also in Arabian tradition. In Scripture they occur first in Gen. xiv. 7, occupying the territory around Kadesh, and suffering from the invasion of Chedorlaomer and his confederates. They appear next assaulting the Israelites, shortly after the exodus from Egypt, at Rephidim, in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai (Ex. xvii. 8; cf. Deut. XXV. 17). They again occur falling upon a party of the Israelites on the southern verge of the promised land (Num. xiv. 45; cf. xiii. 29). In the time of the judges they are found associated with the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Midianites, and “the children of the east,” in repeated attacks upon the Israelites, invading their territory from the eastern side of Jordan (Judges iii. 13; vi. 3). Saul, by divine command, led an expedition into the country of Amalek, waging against them an exterminating war, “smiting them from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt” (1 Sam. XV. 1). David also “invaded the Geshurites, and the Gezrites, and the Amalekites; for these nations were of old the inhabitants of the land as thou goest to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt” (1 Sam. xxvii. 8). The last notice occurs in 1 Chron. iv. 43, from which we learn that in the days of Hezekiah a body of Simeonites “went to mount Seir” and “smote the rest of the Amalekites that were escaped;” a notice showing the accomplishment of the doom of extermination which had been denounced against them (Ex. xvii. 14-16; Num. xxv. 20), and finding an echo in the words of an Arabian poet, “The race of Amlak has disappeared, and there is left of it neither mean man nor ...mighty” (Maçoudi, Les Prairies d'Or, par Meynard et Courteille, vol. iii. 104). We twice hear of Agag as the name of the king of the nation (Num. xxiv. 7; 1 Sam. xv. 8); and it is reasonably supposed that this, like Pharaoh in Egypt, was a name common to all their kings. It has been generally supposed that the Haman of the book of Esther, called “the Agagite,” belonged to the royal line of the Amalekites; but it is now found, from Assyrian records, that Agagi was the name of a country east of Assyria, from which it may be assumed that the title was derived. See Lenormant, Lettres Ass. i. 45.
Josephus agrees with Scripture in assigning to the Amalekites the territory immediately to the south of Palestine. Thus he speaks of them as inhabiting “Gobolitis and Petra” (Gobolitis = Gebal, in Ps. lxxxiii. 7; cf. Reland, Palaestina, p. 71); and as reaching “from Pelusium to the Red Sea” (Ant. Jud. iii. 2, 1; vi. 7, 3; cf. ii. 1, 2). The country which they are thus represented as occupying is suited only to a nomadic population; and accordingly the indications of the Scripture narrative point to this as the general character of the Amalekite people. They appear as the Bedouins of ancient times, rapid and devastating in their movements (1 Sam. xxx. 1); and in their expeditions “coming up with their cattle and their tents” (Jud. vi. 5). At the same time, in the more fertile portions of their territory they doubtless had settled abodes. We read in 1 Sam. xv. 5 of “a city of Amalek;”' and Josephus speaks, apparently in an exaggerated way, of their cities being captured by means of elaborate siege operations (Ant. Jud. vi. 7, 2).
The ethnical character and relation of this people, and their complete national history, it is impossible satisfactorily to make out from the fragmentary materials in our hands. They are not mentioned in the table of nations in Gen. x., while in Gen. xxxvi. 12, 16, their ancestry seems to be referred to Esau. At the same time, the existence of the nation is noticed in Gen xiv., long before Esau and it seems unnatural to understand this, with Hengstenberg and others, in a proleptic sense, especially as there are other independent grounds for referring the beginning of their history to an earlier date. It is certain that the genealogical tables of Scripture, like those of Arabia, include cases of adoption or affiliation as well as of direct descent, and probably it is in this sense that the notice referring Amalek to Esau should be understood. In Balaam’s prophecy Amalek is called “the first of nations” (גדים דאשית proestan· tissima gentium, Gesenius), Num. xxiv. 20, an expression scarcely reconcilable in the circumstances with descent from Jacob’s brother. Again, though found in Jewish scripture located in the immediate south and east of the Israelitish territory, yet there are indications in Scripture itself that at one time they had had a wider extension. “The mount of the Amalekites” is mentioned as situated in “the land of Ephraim” (Jud. xii. 15), apparently warranting the inference that they once held possessions on the west of the Jordan (see Stanley, Sin. and Pal., p. 237, n.) “Amalek” also is found in some copies of the LXX., as the translation of Maacah, in 2 Sam. x. 6, 8, giving some ground for the belief that a section of the same race had once been settled on the north-east of Palestine (see Ewald, Gesch. Israel's, Bd. I. 335). There is little in the Bible to illustrate their linguistic affinity; but so far as appears their language was Shemitic, identical with or very closely allied to the Hebrew. Samuel and the captive Agag (1 Sam. xv. 32), and David and the Amalekite youth (2 Sam. i. 13) converse together; and it has been attempted also to explain the names Amalek and Agag by Shemitic analogies (Meier, Zeitschrift d. morg. Ges., Bd. xvii. p. 577). By Philo (Vita Mosis, § 39) the Amalekites of the Sinaitic peninsula are called Phoenicians.
The traditions of the Arabians regarding this race are confused and conflicting, yet certainly are not to be summarily rejected as destitute of any claim to historic credibility; and with all their entanglement they speak strongly for the ancient and far-extended power of the people in question, and also more doubtfully for their Shemitic affinities. In these traditions, Amlak or Amlik, the father of the Amalekites, is represented sometimes as the son of Laud {i.e., Lud), the son of Shem; sometimes as the son of Aram, the son of Laud; while sometimes also he is spoken of as a son of Ham. They belong, with the Adites, Thamudites, and others, to the primitive races of Arabia. They are said to have been expelled from Babylonia by the Assyrian conquerors, and driven westward into Arabia and Syria, to have built and reigned in Aleppo, to have conquered and for some centuries retained possession of Egypt, and to be the ancestors of the Berbers in North Africa (see Abulfeda, Hist. Ante-Isl., pp. 16, 178; Maçoudi, op. cit., vol. iii., p. 106; C. de Perceval, Hist. des Arabes, vol. i., p. 18); Knobel, Volkertafel, p. 198; Movers, Phönizier, 2ter Th., Bd. ii., p. 422). With these Arabian accounts it is natural to bring into connection the facte narrated by Manetho, and now in substance ascertained from old Egyptian records, regarding the conquest of the Nile valley by an Arabian race, called Hycsos by the former, and Menti, or shepherds, in the latter (see Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iii., p. 266; Brugsch, Hist. d' Egypte, vol. i., p. 75; Chabas, Les Pasteurs en Egypte, p. 9) Now, from the time of the eighteenth dynasty, northern Arabia is found in Egyptian monuments to be in possession of a people called Shasu, a name which Egyptologers generally compare with the second syllable of Hycsos, and which also, perhaps, corresponds with Zuzim of Gen. xiv. 5. These Shasu may with confidence be identified with the Amalekites of Scripture; their locale and their habits are the same; and of them we learn that “they were spread over a vast territory, quite like the wandering Arabs of our day. They are found near Djor, on the northeast frontier of Egypt, as well as in the defiles of Lebanon, where their depredations made themselves felt fourteen centuries before our era” (Chabas, Etudes sur l' Antiquité Historique, p. 114; cf. his Voyage d'un Egyptien, p. 111). “They wear short tunics, a turban-like head-dress, and are armed with spears and axes. A characteristic feature is the long beard, as among the Canaanitish nations” (Brugsch, Geog. Inschriften, Bd. ii. 53).
The notices occurring in Arabian writers, which speak of Amalekites as spread over various more southern portions of Arabia, may probably be referred to the period subsequent to their expulsion from their northern seats by the Israelites and other enemies. The Benu-Kerker, who dwell around Mecca, are by some referred to this stock; the same is true of the Benu-Amila, who, before migrating northwards into Syria, dwelt in Yemen. We hear of Amalekites also in “Cheibar, Jatrib, and other parts of Hedjaz” (Abulfeda, op. cit., p. 179); in regard to which notice a certain degree of confirmation is afforded by the mention by Pliny of an Arabian town, the name of which reads Marippa Palmalacum, but which probably should be read Jatrippa Alamalacum, that is, Jatrib the Amalekite (see Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi. 32; Blau, Zeitschrift d. m. Ges., Bd. xxii. 668; cf. Noldeke, Uber d. Amalekiter, 37). According to some (Tuch, Blau, and others), the famous Sinaitic inscriptions, ascertained to be written in a Shemitic dialect, are to be ascribed to the Amalekite race. Doubtless their authors dwelt in the country once inhabited by this people, but that they belonged to them, and not to some succeeding race, has not yet been demonstrated.
From the cuneiform records we have gained as yet no illustration of this subject, unless the people Malikhu, or Malaku, mentioned in the inscriptions of Sennacherib among certain Aramaean tribes inhabiting the valley of the Euphrates, may be identified with Amalek (see Records of the Past, vol. i., pp. 26, 57).
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