Aamu (Ancient Egyptian: 𓂝𓄿𓅓𓅱, romanized: ꜥꜣmw) was an name used to designate West Asians in ancient Egypt.[1] It is often translated as "Western Asiatic", but it might refer specifically to CanaanitesorAmorites.[1][2]
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| Aamu inhieroglyphs | |||||
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Contemporary Egyptian sources from the time of the wars against the Hyksos also refer to the latter as ꜥꜣmw. Although they have left no inscriptions in their own language, some of their personal names have turned up in Egyptian records, which are a syntactical and lexical match for West Semitic dialects.[5] An ancient Egyptian painting in the tomb of 12th Dynasty official Khnumhotep II, at Beni Hasan (c. 1900 BCE), shows a group of West Asiatic foreigners, possibly Canaanites, labelled as Aamu (ꜥꜣmw), including the leading man with a Nubian ibex labelled "Abisha the Hyksos" (𓋾𓈎𓈉 ḥḳꜣ-ḫꜣsw, Heqa-kasut for "Hyksos").[1][2][3][4] The Aamu from this relief are further labeled as being from the area of Shu, which may be identified, with some uncertainty, with the area of Moab in southern Palestine around the Jordan River, or generally the southern Levant, just east of the Jordan and the Red Sea.[6]
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