we
have a reference to the overthrow of the cities of the plain.

Eastward of the Dead Sea and the Jordan the country is again mountainous
and bare. Here were the territories of Reuben and Gad, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh; here also were the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon,
of Bashan and the Amorites. Here too was the land of Gilead, south of
the Lake of Tiberias and north of the Dead Sea.

We can read the name of Muab or Moab on the base of the second of the
six colossal statues which Ramses II. erected in front of the northern
pylon of the temple of Luxor. It is there included among his conquests.
The statue is the only Egyptian monument on which the name has hitherto
been found. But this single mention is sufficient to guarantee its
antiquity, and to prove that in the days before the Exodus it was
already well known in Egypt.

To the north of Moab came the kingdom of Ammon, or the children of Ammi.
The name of Ammon was a derivative from that of the god Ammi or Ammo,
who seems to have been regarded as the ancestor of the nation, and "the
father of the children of Ammon" was accordingly called Ben-Ammi, "the
son of Ammi" (Gen. xix. 38). Far away in the north, close to the
junction of the rivers Euphrates and Sajur, and but a few miles to the
south of the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish, the worship of the same
god seems to have been known to the Aramaean tribes. It was here that
Pethor stood, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, and it was from
Pethor that the seer Balaam came to Moab to curse the children of
Israel. Pethor, we are told, was "by the river (Euphrates) of the land
of the children of Ammo," where the word represents a proper name (Num.
xxii. 5). To translate it "his people," as is done by the Authorized
Version, makes no sense. On the Assyrian monuments Ammon is sometimes
spoken of as Beth-Ammon, "the house of Ammon," as if Ammon had been a
living man.

Like Moab, Ammon was a region of limestone mountains and barren cliffs.
But there were fertile fields on the banks of the Jabbok, the sources of
which rose not far from the capital Rabbath.

North of Gilead and the Yarmuk was the volcanic plateau of Bashan,
Ziri-Basana, or "the Plain of Bashan," as it is termed in the cuneiform
tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Its western slope towards the Lakes of Merom
and Tiberias was known as Golan (now Jolan); its eastern plateau of
metallic lava was Argob, "the stony" (now El Lejja). Bashan was included
in the Haur