Moabites, Kingdom of the
Years: 1341BCE - 582BCE
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan.
The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea.
The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel.
The Moabite capital was Dibon.
In Biblical times, the nation was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbors to the west.
Capital
Dhiban `Amman JordanRelated Events
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Near East (2,637 – 910 BCE) Bronze and Early Iron — Delta Kingdoms, Aegean City-Coasts, Arabian Caravan Seeds
Geographic and Environmental Context
The Near East includes Egypt, Sudan, Israel, most of Jordan, western Saudi Arabia, western Yemen, southwestern Cyprus, and western Turkey (Aeolis, Ionia, Doris, Lydia, Caria, Lycia, Troas) plus Tyre (extreme SW Lebanon).-
Anchors: the Nile Valley and Delta; Sinai–Negev–Arabah; the southern Levant (with Tyre as the sole Levantine node in this subregion); Hejaz–Asir–Tihāma on the Red Sea; Yemen’s western uplands/coast; southwestern Cyprus; western Anatolian littoral (Smyrna–Ephesus–Miletus–Halicarnassus–Xanthos; Troad).
Climate & Environment
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Nile floods oscillated; Aegean coastal plains fertile; Arabian west slope aridity increased, highland terraces scaled slowly.
Societies & Settlement
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Lower/Upper Egypt (full Pharaonic cores just south but contiguous influence); Aegean Anatolia (Minoan/Mycenaean interactions; later Aeolian/Ionian/Dorian successors).
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Levantine Tyre (within this subregion) arose as Phoenician node; Arabian west oases supported caravan precursors; Yemen west highlands nurtured terrace farming and incense beginnings.
Technology
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Bronze widespread; early iron in Anatolia/Levant; sail-powered shipping matured; terracing and cisterns in Hejaz–Yemen highlands.
Corridors
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Nile–Delta–Aegean maritime bridge; Tyre connected to Cyprus/Anatolia; Red Sea coastal cabotage began; Incense path seeds in Yemen–Hejaz.
Symbolism
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Egyptian temple cosmology radiated north; Aegean cults at capes; Tyrian Melqart/Asherah; Arabian highland local cults.
Adaptation
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Floodplain–coastal–terrace redundancy stabilized economies; incense gardens hedged aridity.
Canaan (meaning the area covering roughly modern Israel, the Palestinian territories, and southern Lebanon to Byblos) in the Late Bronze Age is a collection of city-states under the authority of the Egyptians.
The cities are very small, no more than towns, and are concentrated along the coast and in a few inland valleys.
They are ethnically diverse, so far as can be judged, but they speak languages of the West Semitic language family (probably mutually intelligible) and share a common culture in many respects, including religion, diet, and economic and political organization.
Semitic-speaking Hebrews emerge in Canaan probably about 1250 BCE during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, developing small villages in the hill country and in the south.
Three other Hebrew-speaking peoples have settled east of the Jordan River: the Edomites in the south, ...
…the Moabites east of the Dead Sea, and …
...the Ammonites on the edge of the Syrian Desert east of Gilead.
This common Late Bronze culture collapses at the end of the Late Bronze period.
The collapse is gradual rather than sudden, extending over a century or so between 1250 and 1150 BCE.
Many, but not all, of the Canaanite cities are destroyed, international trade collapses, and the Egyptians withdraw.
Rameses II has to campaign vigorously in Canaan to maintain Egyptian power after the near collapse of the Battle of Kadesh.
Egyptian forces penetrate into Moab and Ammon, where a permanent fortress garrison (called simply "Ramesses") is established.
Ramesses II fights also in Nubia.
The Mesha Stele (also known as the "Moabite Stone"), whose story parallels, with some differences, an episode in the bible's Books of Kings (2 Kings 3:4-8), provides invaluable information on the Moabite language and the political relationship between Moab and Israel at one moment in the ninth century BCE.
It is the most extensive inscription ever recovered that refers to the kingdom of Israel (the "House of Omri"), it bears the earliest certain extra-biblical reference to the Israelite god Yahweh, and, if French scholar André Lemaire's reconstruction of a portion of line 31 is correct, the earliest mention of the "House of David" (i.e., the kingdom of Judah).
A civilization of trade and agriculture flourishes in the second millennium BCE in Edom, the land to the south and east of ancient Israel (its people, the Edomites, traced by Biblical tradition to the patriarch Jacob's elder brother Esau).
The Edomites may have been connected with the Shasu and Shutu, nomadic raiders mentioned in Egyptian sources.
Indeed, a letter from an Egyptian scribe at a border fortress in the Wadi Tumilat during the reign of Merneptah reports movement of nomadic "shasu-tribes of Edom" to watering holes in Egyptian territory.
The earliest Iron Age settlements—possibly copper mining camps—date to the ninth century BCE.
The Edomites' original country, according to the Tanakh, stretches from the Sinai peninsula as far as Kadesh Barnea.
Southward, it reaches as far as Eilat, which is the seaport of Edom.
On the north of Edom is the territory of Moab.
The boundary between Moab and Edom is the Wadi Zered.
The ancient capital of Edom is Bozrah.
According to Genesis, Esau's descendants settled in this land after displacing the Horites.
It was also called the land of Seir; Mount Seir appears to have been strongly identified with them and may have been a cultic site.
In the time of Amaziah (838 BCE), Selah (Petra) is its principal stronghold, Eilat and Ezion-geber its seaports.
King Omri, after conquering Moab, forms an alliance with the Phoenician city of Tyre and moves the capital of Israel to Samaria.(Omri, whose name appears frequently in Assyrian inscriptions, is mentioned briefly and unfavorably in I Kings 16 Micah 6:16 but is thought by modern scholars to have been one of the most important rulers of the northern kingdom.)
Ahab, who succeeds Omri as king of Israel, concludes an alliance with King Asa of Judah, ending the nearly half-century of warfare between the two nations.
Omri has reestablished Israel's economic and military significance among the Syrian and Palestinian minor kingdoms, so much so that years after his death the Assyrians will refer to the northern kingdom as “the land of Omri” He leaves to his son Ahab an empire that comprises not only territory east of the Jordan River, in Gilead and probably Bashan, but also the land of Moab, whose king is tributary.
The southern kingdom of Judah, if not actually subject to Omri, is certainly a subordinate ally.
Ahab's marriage to Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal of Sidon, reported in the Bible, forges an alliance with the Phoenicians.
According to the Hebrew scriptures, King Ahab leads Israel in incessant warfare with neighboring Aram (Syria) and undertakes large-scale construction projects in the cities of Israel, …
…greatly expanding the city of Jericho.
Today the capital of the Jericho Governate, its current population of more than twenty thousand occupies the lowest permanently inhabited site on earth.
Jericho is also believed to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city.
Omri's conquest of Moab is known from the Moabite Stone, a black basalt stone, 1.1 meters (forty-four inches) high, discovered at Dhiban in 1868 and now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The Moabite king Mesha erected this stela about forty years after the event in the city of Dibon (modern Dhiban, Jordan).
The stone's text of thirty-four lines, written in a Canaanite alphabet similar to contemporary Hebrew, is the only written document of any length that survives from Moab and the only royal stela known from Israel's neighbors.
In its inscription, Mesha, who flourished around 850, tells of Omri's reconquest of Moab and ascribes the renewed Israelite domination over Moab to the anger of Chemosh.
Mesha then describes his own successful rebellion against Israel, which probably occurs during the reign of Omri's successor, Ahab.
The Moabite Stone, whose story parallels, with some differences, an episode in the bible's Books of Kings (2 Kings 3:4-8), provides invaluable information on the Moabite language and the political relationship between Moab and Israel at one moment in the ninth century BCE.
It is the most extensive inscription ever recovered that refers to the kingdom of Israel (the "House of Omri"), it bears the earliest certain extra-biblical reference to the Israelite god Yahweh, and, if French scholar André Lemaire's reconstruction of a portion of line 31 is correct, the earliest mention of the "House of David" (i.e., the kingdom of Judah).
Thomas L. Thompson (The Bible in History), however, interprets the Mesha stele as suggesting that Omri is an eponym, or legendary founder of the kingdom rather than an historical person.
Most archaeologists reject this interpretation, seeing Omri as historical.
Assyrian kings frequently referred to Omri's successors as belonging to the "House of Omri" (Bit Hu-um-ri-a).