To many the name Amurrū will come as something new, but to Assyriologists mât Amurrē, “the land of Amurrū,” is a revelation dating from the time of the decipherment of the Tel al-Amarna tablets in 1887–8. It is true that the identity of the name did not dawn on them immediately, but it was not long before they became aware of it. When this took place they realized that the district which they had read as mât Aḫarrē, thought of as “the land behind”, and rendered “the west”, had, owing to the polyphony of the Assyro-Babylonian syllabary, been misread. It should have been mât Amurrē, and translated “the land of Amurrū”, i.e. “the Amorites”, who, because they dwelt west of Assyria and Babylonia, were thought of as “the westerners”, and their country became the designation of the western cardinal point.