Henry O. Thompson
Part 1 of 2 Parts
We can learn a great deal about the bene Ammon, the sons of Ammon, the Ammonites, by reading the Bible. There are over 135 references to Ammon, Rabbah or Rabbath (= Rabbath Ammon, the capital), Ammonite, and Ammonites in the Revised Standard Version (RSV). Our knowledge is also being supplemented by the results of archaeology including chance finds of seals and seal impressions. Having excavated in Ammonite territory for several years, I feel a certain kinship with the desert kingdom. Their story is in a sense my story, though it is also part of the larger human story. As the excavator’s spade continues to fill out the picture of these biblical people, I sense a deeper understanding of the Bible and of myself.
Early References to the Ammonites
The first appearance of the Ammonites in the Bible is in Genesis 19:38. This is the infamous story of Lot and his two daughters who escaped from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot left Zoar and lived in a cave in the hills. The daughters thought the whole of humanity had been destroyed. They committed incest with their
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father and became pregnant. The older daughter had a son named Moab — “He is the father of the Moabites to this day.” The younger bore a son and called him Ben-’ammi — “He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.” One would like to think that the record is objective history, but even in objective history there are some things better left unsaid. The suspicion is that this was recorded to poke fun at the Ammonites and Moabites or perhaps to ventilate some hostility toward them. On occasion, as we will see shortly, they were enemies of the Hebrew people. The easterners, however, were more often subjected to Israelite rule than the other way around. The hostility appears again in Deuteronomy 23:3. Here the people are told that Ammonites and Moabites are not to enter the assembly of the Lord because they did not offer hospitality to the Hebrews after the Wilderness Wandering and because they hired Balaam the diviner to curse Israel. The rule was revived in Nehemiah 13:1. The Balaam story is in Numbers 22–24 (see Bible and Spade, Autumn 1977, PP- 121–124). In 22:4–5, we find it is the king of Moab who sent for Balaam. The inclusion of the Ammonites in the list of forbidden people in Deuteronomy 23:3 is thus something of a mystery. No less a person than King Rehoboam was half Ammonite, so the exclusion of Ammonites even unto the tenth generation (Deuteronomy 23:3) was apparently ignored.
While the Genesis story may reflect hostility, it also shows an awareness that the Hebrews, Ammonites and Moabites were all related. They were cousins or kinsmen. The name Ben-’Ammi in Genesis 19:38 may mean “son of my kinsman” or “son of my clan.” Another suggested meaning is “son of my uncle.” Here in Genesis one might expect “son of my father.” More commonly, the term is translated “son of my people.” “The sons of Ammon” appear in Deuteronomy 2:19, 37 and Jeremiah 9:26, 25:21 and 27:3. In Hosea 1:9, the Lord tells Hosea to call his son, Lo-’ammi, “not my people.” In Hosea 2:1, the message is reversed, “Say to your brother(s), my people (‘Ammi).”
‘Ammi may have been the name of a god or an adjective describing a deity. A South Arabic god ‘Amm is known from later inscriptions. The Qatabanians were “children of ‘Amm.” Deity is suggested also by such names as ‘Ammiel, “my people is God” (Numbers 13:12, etc.), Amminadab, “my kinsman is noble (or generous),” as in Exodus 6:23 etc., and Ammishaddai, “my kinsman or protector is (the god) Shaddai” (Numbers 1:12, etc.). Landes
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Sketch map showing the locations of Ammonite sites.
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suggests “protector” as part of the Genesis 19 story, for the widowed father was his daughter’s protector.
The name ‘Amm appears in various forms in other languages of the Ancient Near East. In the time of the biblical Patriarchs, the Mari tablets from ca. 1750-1800 B.C. have such forms as Hamma-EI ( = biblical ‘Ammiel) and Hammanu ( = ‘Ammon). The Alalakh tablets several centuries later have a king Ammitaku or Ammitaqum. He chose a princess of Ebla as a wife for his son. Several other compound names with ‘Amm are also found in the Alalakh tablets. Also from the Late Bronze (LB) Age we have the Ugaritic tablets from the coast of Syria and the Tell el-Amarna tablets from Egypt. Ugaritic has two forms, ben ‘ammi and ben ‘ammyn. Amarna gives the name of a Beirut prince as ‘Ammu-nira. The later Assyrians refer to the Bit-Ammanu. the house of ‘Ammon.
The Ammonites and the Zamzummim
Deuteronomy 2:20–21 gives a glimpse of the land before the Ammonites arrived. God told the Israelites (vs. 19) that they were not to harass the sons of Ammon for He was not going to give them the land of the Ammonites. In fact, the Ammonites had dispossessed the Zamzummim. This is the name the Ammonites gave to the Rephaim, giants like the Anakim. The Lord destroyed these Zamzummim and gave the land to the Ammonites. In Deuteronomy 3:11 we read about Og, king of the Amorite kingdom of Bashan. The Israelites in turn defeated Og and conquered Bashan. This verse tells us that Og was of the remnant of the Rephaim. His iron bed was nine by four cubits, about 13½ by six feet. He was indeed a giant or at least the king had a king-sized bed! The bed was kept in Rabbah of the Ammonites. Rabbah is usually identified as Rabbath or Rabbath-Ammon, the capital of the Ammonites, present-day Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But why was the bed kept there? The Bible does not say. Perhaps Og was part of the Rephaim dispossessed by the Ammonites. When he was forced to leave Rabbah, possibly he left his bed behind and then the Ammonites kept it as booty from the battle. Bernhard W. Anderson suggested it was a museum piece. Some have suggested it was neither iron nor a bed but a large dolmen visible from the citadel of Amman. A dolmen is a structure formed by a flat rock placed like a roof on several upright slabs of
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Modem Amman, the capital of Jordan, as seen from the ancient Citadel, with the Roman theater of the Decapolis city of Philadelphia in the center.
stone. They are of uncertain date or function. George M. Landes compared the bed of Og to a bed of the god Marduk. This bed was kept in Esagila, the temple of Marduk in Babylon. The name Marduk appears in two towns in Bashan. Perhaps Og was a worshipper of Marduk and Og’s bed was a replica of the Marduk bed. Landes suggested the name Ammonite may be a variant form of Amorite, or at least that the two groups were related.
Some have suggested a relationship between the Zamzummim and the Zuzim in Genesis 14:5. Chedorlaomer and the kings with him “subdued the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham..” Tell Ham is four miles south of Irbid in northwest Jordan, ancient Gilead. It is about half way between the Jordan River and Ramoth-gilead. Ashtoreth-Karnaim has been identified with Sheikh Sa’ad about 20 miles north of Ramoth-gilead and about 20 miles east of the Sea of Galilee. Both sites are northwest of the area usually assigned to the Kingdom of Ammon. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls uses Zamzummim in Genesis 14 instead of Zumin, but scholars today question the identification of Zuzim and Zamzummim.
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The Date of the Ammonite Settlement
Whatever their identification, the glimpse is tantalizing. Part of that is a matter of timing. When did the Ammonites dispossess the Zamzummim? The truth is we do not know. One reason it would be interesting to know is the highly debated date of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt and the Hebrew Conquest of the Holy Land. Between 1933 and 1946, Nelson Glueck made extensive surface surveys of the East Jordan area including ancient Edom, Moab, Ammon, The Kingdom of Sihon (South Gilead) between the Jordan River and the Ammonites, and concluded that there were no settlements in the area during most of the second millennium from the Middle Bronze I age (about 1900 B.C.) through the LB Age (1550-1200 B.C.) until the end of the LB Age, in the 13th century B.C. Then the two kingdoms of Edom and Moab became established in their respective areas. Since they were there when the Israelites came through, this would mean the Exodus took place early on in this century. This suggested to some that Ramses II (ca. 1290-1225 B.C.) may have been the pharaoh of the Exodus, the one who knew not Joseph (Exodus 1:8). The Conquest took place after the 40 years Wandering in the Wilderness, so it would have begun ca. 1250 B.C. Ramses’ son, Merneptah, left an inscription, a stele, in which he claimed he had destroyed Israel. This is the oldest known reference to Israel outside the Bible. The hierglyphic designation of Israel indicates that Israel was an identifiable people but not a settled nation, which is what one might expect shortly after the Conquest.
Nelson Glueck was working at a time when the analysis of pottery was still somewhat in its infancy. Archaeologists knew that different types of pottery indicated different dates, based on the work of Sir Flinders Petrie in 1890 at Tel el-Hesi and the work of William Foxwell Albright at Tell Beit Mersim in the 1920’s. But we learn as we go along. We know more about pottery dating now. Glueck stressed that more thorough surveys and excavations were necessary to confirm or clarify his work. This is now in process. In recent years very extensive surveys have been made in this area. We now know that Glueck’s pioneering work missed many sites. Excavations and accidental finds have also added to our information. Crystal-Margaret Bennett has dug in the old Edomite territory. Buseirah (biblical Bozrah, Genesis 36:33; 1 Chronicles 1:44) was apparently not settled until the Iron Age II period, ca.
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900-600 B.C. She has suggested that urban settlement was later than Glueck’s suggestion. Other finds, however, point to the presence of people in this region throughout the second millennium. Tombs are part of this evidence. There may have been small villages rather than large urban centers. The excavations at Sahab ten miles southeast of Amman show a continuing presence, as does Amman (ancient Rabbath-Ammon) itself.
One of the most intriguing finds was the accidential discovery of a Late Bronze temple outside Amman. In 1955, bulldozers were enlarging the Amman airport when a building from the 14th century B.C. was uncovered. It was excavated in 1966 and again in 1976. It has now been bulldozed out of existence by a more recent expansion of the airport. Inside the building, excavators found hundreds of artifacts — pottery, jewelry, stone vessels, bronze weapons and tools. The latest excavator. Dr. Larry G. Herr, suggests that these materials are typical tomb remains. His investigations outside the building revealed many burned human bones. Perhaps the building was a charnal house for cremations like those dating from the Early Bronze Age found in Bab edh-Dhra’ near the Dead Sea. The building was isolated, with no town around it. It has been called an “amphictyonic shrine,” the worship center of a tribal
Pottery vessels from the Late Bronze Age building found at the Amman airport.
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confederation. It may have been utilized by people from Amman two and one-half miles away. If it was a gathering place for desert tribes, then perhaps the Ammonites were not a kingdom of cities, but a kingdom of tribes or a nomadic kingdom. But it should be emphasized that this does not mean uncivilized or backward people. The contents of the airport building included many very fine imported wares from as far away as Greece, as well as good local material. They may not have had an extensive urban culture but there was culture there just the same.
One way to interpret this early information is to suggest that the Ammonites were an organized kingdom (Numbers 21:24; Deuteronomy 2:19–21, 37; 3:16) when the Israelites came through the area and began their conquests, but that urban settlement focused on large cities did not come until later. This leaves the date of the Conquest an open question at this time.
The Ammonite Border
The land of the Ammonites is closely related to the Jabbok River, modern Wadi ez-Zerqa (blue water). It begins 23 miles east of the Jordan River, at a spring near Amman in the Wadi Amman. It flows north for about 15 miles, then turns west and flows to the Jordan River. The Jabbok is famous in Genesis as the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel of God (32:24–32). (See Bible and Spade, Spring 1978, pp. 57-59.) Simon Cohen has suggested that the Hebrew for “wrestled” is a pun on the name Jabbok (y’bq compared to ybq). The east-west stretch formed the boundary between the Amorite Kingdom of Sihon to the south and that of Og, king of Bashan, to the north (Judges 11:22), dividing Gilead into two parts (Deuteronomy 3:12, 16; Joshua 12:2–6). The early course, the south-north portion formed the core of the western boundary of the Ammonites in much of the history of the kingdom (Joshua 13:10). This boundary was called “very strong” in Numbers 21:24. Joshua 12:2 suggests that Sihon’s territory extended to the Jabbok. Later, the Ammonites had a string of fortresses forming a protective barrier 10 to 15 miles west of the Jabbok. Occasionally, the western boundary was pushed to the Jordan River, resulting in conflicts with the Israelites. This may explain the unusual reference in Joshua 13:25 which says the Gadites had half the land of the Ammonites. The northern and southern boundaries of the Ammonite territory
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varied a good bit as well. At times, the Ammonites controlled land all the way to modern Syria and at times they extended their rule south to the Arnon River, the northern boundary of Moab in Moses’ day. The eastern boundary faded off into the Arabian desert.
The famous King’s Highway (Numbers 20:14–21) ran from the gulf of Aqaba in the south to Damascus in the north (see Bible and Spade, Autumn 1978, pp. 109-121). It came along the western boundary of the Ammonites, into the capital of Rabbath-Ammon and continued north to modern Jerash and on to Damascus. Other trade routes went east and west from the desert to the Jordan Valley and on to Jerusalem and the Mediterranean and back again. Much of the wealth exhibited in the airport building and later, came from commerce — the flow of goods and taxes on the caravans traveling through the land. The camel had been domesticated in large numbers by the early Iron Age as we know from the story of Gideon and the Midianite raiders (Judges 6:5). The Ammonites sailed these “ships of the desert” to wealth or taxed them as others brought their caravans through the Ammonite crossroads.
The Ammonites in the Period of the Judges
After the Conquest, we next hear about the Ammonites early in the period of the Judges. In Judges 3:12–30, we have the story of Eglon, king of Moab, and Ehud who killed Eglon and led Israel to victory over the Moabites. Vs. 13 says Eglon gathered the Ammonites and Amalekites as allies and with their help took possession of “the city of palms,” or Jericho (see Deuteronomy 34:3, 2 Chronicles 28:15). Ehud was a Benjaminite so Eglon may have controlled part of the tribal area of Benjamin as well. After Ehud killed Eglon, he gathered his troops and held the fords of the Jordan. They killed 10,000 Moabites (vs. 29) but nothing further is said of the Ammonites.
The Ammonites themselves were at war with Israel in Judges 10–11. The Israelites brought it on themselves according to Judges 10:6. They worshipped other gods, including the gods of the Ammonites, so the Lord sold them into the hand of their enemies, including the Ammonites (vs 7). They oppressed the Israelites in Gilead, east of the Jordan, for 18 years and also crossed the Jordan and fought Judah, Benjamin and Ephraim on the west bank. The people cried out to God in their misery. He reminded them that He
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View of Jericho, the city of Palm trees, looking east from the ancient tell.
had delivered them from the Ammonites, among others, (vs. 11) and that they had now forsaken Him. At the time, the Israelites were camped at Mizpah (“watchtower”). The site is uncertain but it was in northern Gilead. We know it from Genesis 31:22–55 and the Mizpah benediction, “The Lord watch between you and me, while we are absent one from the other,” the vow Laban made as part of the covenant he made with Jacob. Now, as the Israelites faced the Ammonites, they gathered their forces at this ancient site. They needed a leader. They knew of a Gileadite who had been an illegitimate child. His family had rejected him and he had become an outlaw with a band of “worthless follows,” surviving by raiding the countryside. The elders asked Jephthah to lead their fight and promised to make him the leader of all of Gilead if he was successful. He began with diplomacy (11:12). He sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites to remind him that the area of Gilead was formerly the kingdoms of Sihon and Og. The Lord had given this area to the Israelites who had occupied the land for 300 years. The Ammonites should be satisfied with what their god Chemosh had given them, Jephthah argued. But they were not, and they pressed on with the war and the Lord gave Jephthah and the Israelites a
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great victory over the Ammonites.
There are several interesting aspects of this story. Jephthah smote the Ammonites from Aroer to Minnith and as far as Abelkeramim. These sites are of uncertain location but there is agreement they were west of Rabbath-Ammon. In other words, Jephthah drove the Ammonites out of the area of the old kingdom of Sihon, out of Gilead and perhaps as far south as Heshbon. But he did not invade Ammonite territory or the traditional area east of the Jabbok’s first 15 miles. The second item of interest is the 300 years that Jephthah said the Israelites had dwelt there (11:26). The previous story of Abimelech (Judges 9) ended with the destruction of Shechem. Excavations there found a destruction level of about 1125 B.C. If the Book of Judges has the judges listed in chronological order, Jephthah could be dated to about 1100 B.C. That pushes the Conquest under Moses back to about 1400 B.C. rather than the widely accepted 1250 B.C. Of course we may be dealing with round numbers that were meant to be approximations rather than actual literally accurate figures.
Around the area of Amman, there are a large number of round and square towers. They are interpreted as watchtowers or lookout points, perhaps small fortified outposts of a defensive system. Plotting them on a map and checking them visually on the ground shows that each one is within site of at least two others. They could thus be used as an early warning system — smoke signals by day and fire signals by night would warn of an approaching enemy. They are so small that any troops stationed there could do little more than fight a delaying action. The real defense must have been back at Ammon. These towers are on the west and north of today’s Amman. Only four have been excavated, three of them by myself. Rujm al-Malfuf (“The mound of cabbage”) was excavated by Roger S. Boraas. He found only Roman pottery down to bedrock. The site is on Jebel Amman on the western side of Amman. It is a mile from the center of town, though today it is surrounded by the growing city. Across the ridge lies Rujm al-Malfuf South. About 10 miles by road west of Amman is Khirbet al-Hajjar while northeast of Amman is Rujm el-Mekheizin on the grounds of the Schneller School. All four towers have the same construction of large rough field stones. However, the last three are dated by the pottery to the 6th/7th century period. In each case there was later re-use, at least raising the possibility that the Romans had re-used Rujm al-Malfuf but had
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done a very thorough job (unbelievably thorough) of cleaning the area before they moved in. That is a mystery that only time might clear. With regard to the period of the Judges, we can note that the latter three towers each produced a small quantity of Iron I pottery (ca. 1200-900 B.C.). Glueck’s explorations suggested Iron I for several other towers. It is at least possible that these places were in use as part of an Ammonite defensive system in the earlier period. There could have been smaller towers later rebuilt, or perhaps simple outposts without towers but used for a similar purpose.
Whether these results will hold for other towers remains to be seen. Glueck noted a lack of pottery at some of them. Some had a few Iron I potsherds while others had large quantities of what he called Iron I-II (1200-600 B.C.). The similarity in construction led him to date the towers to the Iron I period. Later he admitted that was only because they looked old. My excavations suggest the later date of Iron II (ca. 900-600 B.C.), so a fuller description will be made in the discussion of that period. From the Iron I period we should note a 12th/11th century tomb found at Sahab. It was a natural cave with a large number of burials. Several of these were in large pottery jars (pithoi) used as coffins. Curiously, the rims and necks had been removed and the open tops placed against each other. The make-shift coffins were then placed on the ground to form an “M.” We do not know the reason for the configuration though there is an “M” mark on an anthropoid coffin from Tell el-Yahudiyeh in Egypt. Anthropoid coffins are made of clay and shaped like a slipper. There is a lid over the open end. The coffins are called “anthropoid” because the lids have a human face molded in the original clay. Some of these are realistic and some are quite stylized. In Palestine at Tell el-Farah south and at Beth-shan in the north, they have been associated with the Sea People and possibly the Philistines, partly because of the headdress shown on the face on the lid. Some years ago, Albright reported on a Sahab anthropoid coffin with a stylized face. He dated it later, to the 10th-9th centuries B.C. In 1966, army bulldozers working on the Royal Palace grounds on Jabel el-Qusur in Amman uncovered some ruins. Further excavation uncovered a tomb with five anthropoid coffins. Four were lying parallel to each other while a fifth was perpendicular to the others. They had handles along the sides and stylized faces. They date from the 10th-7th centuries. Another example from Dhiban in Moab dates from the 8th century.
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Clay anthropoid coffin from the Royal Pa/ace grounds in Amman.
The Days of the United Monarchy
1 Samuel 11 tells us that Nahash the Ammonite laid siege to Jabesh-gilead (“dry heap of stones”). The town is on the eastern side of the Jordan River, 19 miles southeast of Beth-shan and 12 miles north of the Jabbok River. The Ammonites had taken over Gilead. Nahash (“serpent”) is the first name we have for an Ammonite king. The time is about 1020 B.C. The people of Jabesh-gilead tried to make peace with Nahash. He offered unacceptable terms — to put everyone’s right eye out. The people asked for seven days to think it over. Nahash must have been quite confident of his
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power to allow this, or perhaps the city was so strong he had no choice but hoped to reduce them to surrender by thirst or hunger. At any rate, they sent for help and the message reached Saul, the son of Kish, in Gibeah. Saul mustered the troops of Israel and Judah, made a forced march through the night and defeated the Ammonites. They “were scattered so that no two of them were left together.” (vs. 11). As with Jephthah, Saul did not pursue the Ammonites into their home territory. In 1 Samuel 14:47. we read that he fought the Ammonites as well as other enemies of Israel. After the victory at Jabesh-gilead, Saul was crowned king at Gilgal. Later, when he and his sons were killed, the Philistines hung their bodies on the wall of Beth-shan. The men of Jabesh-gilead marched through the night, rescued the bodies, cremated them and gave the bones proper burial.
To be continued…
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