This narrative has traditionally been considered literal fact but is now generally interpreted as recording a gross popular irony by which the Israelites expressed their loathing of the morality of the Moabites and Ammonites. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the daughters of Lot wanted to have a child and carried out a plot to intoxicate him and have intercourse, resulting in Ammon and his half brother, Moab, being conceived and born. Ben-Ammi literally means ' son of my people'. It is stated there that they descended from Ben-Ammi, a son of Lot through with his younger daughter who plotted with her sister to intoxicate Lot and in his inebriated state, have relations to become pregnant. The first mention of the Ammonites in the Bible is in Genesis 19:37-38. The last notice of the Ammonites occurs in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (§ 119), in the second century CE Justin affirms that they were still a numerous people. The dynast Hyrcanus founded Qasr Al Abd, and was a descendant of the Seleucid Tobiad dynasty of Tobiah, whom Nehemiah mentions in the 5th century BCE as an Ammonite (ii. The Ammonites, with some of the neighboring tribes, did their utmost to resist and check the revival of Jewish power under Judas Maccabaeus in the period 167 to 160 BCE. Their name appears, however, during the time of the Maccabees. The Ammonites received little historical mention from contemporaries through the Persian and early Hellenistic periods. Newer evidence suggests that Ammon enjoyed continuity from the Neo-Babylonian to the Persian period of 550 to 330 BCE. This contradicts the view, dominant for decades, that Transjordan was either destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II, or suffered a rapid decline following Judah's destruction by that king. Other kings attested to in contemporary sources are Barachel (attested to in several contemporary seals) and Hissalel - Hissalel reigned about 620 BCE, and is mentioned in an inscription on a bottle found at Tel Siran in present-day Jordan, along with his son, King Amminadab II, who reigned around 600 BCE.Īrchaeology and history indicate that Ammon flourished during the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626 to 539 BCE). 650 BCE) was among the tributaries who suffered in the course of the great Arabian campaign of Assurbanipal. Somewhat later, the Ammonite king Amminadab I ( fl. An Assyrian tribute-list exists from this period, showing that Ammon paid one-fifth as much tribute as Judah did. In 734 BC the Ammonite king Sanipu was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria, and Sanipu's successor Pudu-ilu held the same position under Sennacherib ( r. 705–681) and Esarhaddon ( r. 681–669). The Kurkh Monolith lists the Ammonite king Baasha ben Ruhubi's army as fighting alongside Ahab of Israel and Syrian allies against Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC, possibly as vassals of Hadadezer, the Aramaean king of Damascus. The Ammonites occupied the northern Central Trans-Jordanian Plateau from the latter part of the second millennium BC to at least the second century CE.Īmmon maintained its independence from the Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th to 7th centuries BCE) by paying tribute to the Assyrian kings at a time when that Empire raided or conquered nearby kingdoms. Further information: List of rulers of Ammon

Ark ammonite bile