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Jordan THE JORDAN REGION IN ANTIQUITY
Jordan - Unavailable
Figure 2. The Jordan Valley in Biblical Times
The Jordan Valley provides abundant archaeological evidence of
occupation by paleolithic and mesolithic hunters and gatherers. A
people of neolithic culture, similar to that found around the
Mediterranean littoral, introduced agriculture in the region. By
the eighth millennium B.C., this neolithic culture had developed
into a sedentary way of life. Settlements at Bayda on the East Bank
and Jericho on the West Bank date from this period and may have
been history's first "cities." Bronze Age towns produced a high
order of civilization and carried on a brisk trade with Egypt,
which exercised a dominant influence in the Jordan Valley in the
third millennium. This thriving urban culture ended after 2000
B.C., when large numbers of Semitic nomads, identified collectively
as the Amorites, entered the region, which became known as Canaan.
Over a period of 500 years, the nomads encroached on the settled
areas, gradually assimilated their inhabitants, and--by the middle
of the second millennium--settled in the Jordan Valley, which
became a Semitic language area. At about this time, Abraham (known
to the Arabs as Ibrahim) and his household entered the area from
the direction of Mesopotamia. The Canaanites and others referred to
this nomadic group of western Semites as the habiru, meaning
wanderers or outsiders. The name Hebrew probably derived
from this term. More abrupt was the incursion of the Hyksos from
the north who passed through Canaan on their way to Egypt.
After recovering from the Hyksos invasion, Egypt attempted to
regain control of Syria, but its claim to hegemony there was
contested by the empire-building Hittites from Anatolia (the
central region of modern Turkey). The prolonged conflict between
these two great powers during the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries
B.C. bypassed the East Bank of the Jordan, allowing for the
development of a string of small tribal kingdoms with names
familiar from the Old Testament: Edom, Moab, Bashan, Gilead, and
Ammon, whose capital was the biblical Rabbath Ammon (modern Amman).
Although the economy of the countryside was essentially pastoral,
its inhabitants adapted well to agriculture and were skilled in
metallurgy. The Edomites worked the substantial deposits of iron
and copper found in their country, while the land to the north was
famous for its oak wood, livestock, resins, and medicinal balms.
The towns profited from the trade routes crisscrossing the region
that connected Egypt and the Mediterranean ports with the southern
reaches of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.
Midway through the thirteenth century B.C., Moses is believed
to have led the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and to have
governed them during their forty-year sojourn in the Sinai
Peninsula. When they were barred by the Edomites from entering
Canaan from the south, the Israelites marched north toward Moab.
Under Joshua, they crossed west over the Jordan River. The conquest
of Canaan by the Israelite tribes was completed between 1220 and
1190 B.C. The tribes of Gad and Reuben, and half of the tribe of
Manasseh were allocated conquered land on the East Bank. At about
this time the Philistines, sea peoples who originated from Mycenae
and who ravaged the eastern Mediterranean, invaded the coast of
Canaan and confronted the Israelites in the interior. It was from
the Philistines that Palestine derived its name, preserved intact
in the modern Arabic word falastin.
Late in the eleventh century B.C., the Israelite tribes
submitted to the rule of the warrior-king Saul. Under his successor
David (ca. 1000-965 or 961 B.C.), Israel consolidated its holdings
west of the Jordan River, contained the Philistines on the coast,
and expanded beyond the old tribal lands on the East Bank. Ancient
Israel reached the peak of its political influence under David's
son, Solomon (965-928 B.C. or 961-922 B.C.), who extended the
borders of his realm from the upper Euphrates in Syria to the Gulf
of Aqaba in the south. Solomon, the first biblical figure for whom
historical records exist outside the Bible, exploited the mineral
wealth of Edom, controlled the desert caravan routes, and built the
port at Elat to receive spice shipments from southern Arabia. With
Solomon's passing, however, his much reduced realm divided into two
rival Jewish kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah (Judea), with
its capital at Jerusalem, in the south. The history of the Jordan
region over the next two centuries was one of constant conflict
between the Jewish kingdoms and the kingdoms on the East Bank
(see Jordan -
fig. 2).
In 722 B.C. Israel fell to the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser,
ruler of a mighty military empire centered on the upper Tigris
River. As a result, the Israelites were deported from their
country. Judah preserved its political independence as a tributary
of Assyria, while the rest of the Jordan region was divided into
Assyrian-controlled provinces that served as a buffer to contain
the desert tribes--a function that would be assigned to the area by
a succession of foreign rulers.
Assyria was conquered in 612 B.C. and its empire was absorbed
by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia. Judah was taken by
Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and carried off
most of the Jewish population to Babylon. Within fifty years,
however, Babylon was conquered by the Persian Cyrus II. The Jews
were allowed to return to their homeland, which, with the rest of
the Jordan region, became part of the Achaemenid Empire.
The Achaemenids dominated the whole of the Middle East for two
centuries until the rise of Macedonian power under Alexander the
Great. With a small but well-trained army, Alexander crossed into
Asia in 334 B.C., defeated Persia's forces, and within a few years
had built an empire that stretched from the Nile River to the Indus
River in contemporary Pakistan. After his death in 323 B.C.,
Alexander's conquests were divided among his Macedonian generals.
The Ptolemaic Dynasty of pharaohs in Egypt and the line of Seleucid
kings in Syria were descended from two of these generals.
Between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D., the
history of Jordan was decisively affected by three peoples: Jews,
Greeks, and Nabataeans. The Jews, many of whom were returning from
exile in Babylonia, settled in southern Gilead. Along with Jews
from the western side of the Jordan and Jews who had remained in
the area, they founded closely settled communities in what later
became known in Greek as the Peraea. The Greeks were mainly
veterans of Alexander's military campaigns who fought one another
for regional hegemony. The Nabataeans were Arabs who had wandered
from the desert into Edom in the seventh century B.C. Shrewd
merchants, they monopolized the spice trade between Arabia and the
Mediterranean. By necessity experts at water conservation, they
also proved to be accomplished potters, metalworkers, stone masons,
and architects. They adopted the use of Aramaic, the Semitic lingua
franca in Syria and Palestine, and belonged entirely to the
cultural world of the Mediterranean.
In 301 B.C. the Jordan region came under the control of the
Ptolemies. Greek settlers founded new cities and revived old ones
as centers of Hellenistic culture. Amman was renamed Philadelphia
in honor of the pharaoh Ptolemy Philadelphus. Urban centers assumed
a distinctly Greek character, easily identified in their
architecture, and prospered from their trade links with Egypt.
The East Bank was also a frontier against the rival dynasty of
the Seleucids, who in 198 B.C. displaced the Ptolemies throughout
Palestine. Hostilities between the Ptolemies and Seleucids enabled
the Nabataeans to extend their kingdom northward from their capital
at Petra (biblical Sela) and to increase their prosperity based on
the caravan trade with Syria and Arabia.
The new Greek rulers from Syria instituted an aggressive policy
of Hellenization among their subject peoples. Efforts to suppress
Judaism sparked a revolt in 166 B.C. led by Judas (Judah)
Maccabaeus, whose kinsmen in the next generation reestablished an
independent Jewish kingdom under the rule of the Hasmonean Dynasty.
The East Bank remained a battleground in the continuing struggle
between the Jews and the Seleucids.
By the first century B.C., Roman legions under Pompey
methodically removed the last remnants of the Seleucids from Syria,
converting the area into a full Roman province. The new hegemony of
Rome caused upheaval and eventual revolt among the Jews while it
enabled the Nabataeans to prosper. Rival claimants to the Hasmonean
throne appealed to Rome in 64 B.C. for aid in settling the civil
war that divided the Jewish kingdom. The next year Pompey, fresh
from implanting Roman rule in Syria, seized Jerusalem and installed
the contender most favorable to Rome as a client king. On the same
campaign, Pompey organized the Decapolis, a league of ten self-
governing Greek cities also dependent on Rome that included Amman,
Jarash, and Gadara (modern Umm Qays), on the East Bank. Roman
policy there was to protect Greek interests against the
encroachment of the Jewish kingdom.
When the last member of the Hasmonean Dynasty died in 37 B.C.,
Rome made Herod king of Judah. With Roman backing, Herod (37-34
B.C.) ruled on both sides of the Jordan River. After his death the
Jewish kingdom was divided among his heirs and gradually absorbed
into the Roman Empire.
In A.D. 106 Emperor Trajan formally annexed the satellite
Nabataean kingdom, organizing its territory within the new Roman
province of Arabia that included most of the East Bank of the
Jordan River. For a time, Petra served as the provincial capital.
The Nabataeans continued to prosper under direct Roman rule, and
their culture, now thoroughly Hellenized, flourished in the second
and third centuries A.D. Citizens of the province shared a legal
system and identity in common with Roman subjects throughout the
empire. Roman ruins seen in present-day Jordan attest to the civic
vitality of the region, whose cities were linked to commercial
centers throughout the empire by the Roman road system and whose
security was guaranteed by the Roman army.
After the administrative partition of the Roman Empire in 395,
the Jordan region was assigned to the eastern or Byzantine Empire,
whose emperors ruled from Constantinople. Christianity, which had
become the recognized state religion in the fourth century, was
widely accepted in the cities and towns but never developed deep
roots in the countryside, where it coexisted with traditional
religious practices.
In the sixth century direct control over the Jordan region and
much of Syria was transferred to the Ghassanids, Christian Arabs
loyal to the Byzantine Empire. The mission of these warrior-nomads
was to defend the desert frontier against the Iranian Sassanian
Empire to the east as well as against Arab tribes to the south; in
practice, they were seldom able to maintain their claim south of
Amman. The confrontations between Syrian, or northern, Arabs--
represented by the Ghassanids--and the fresh waves of nomads moving
north out of the Arabian Peninsula was not new to the history of
the Jordan region and continued to manifest itself into the modern
era. Contact with the Christian Ghassanids was an important source
of the impulse to monotheism that flowed back into Arabia with the
nomads, preparing the ground there for the introduction of Islam.
Data as of December 1989
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