Having mentioned them in a previous post, I got to thinking about the tribe of the Ammonites, and, by extension, the other tribes pottering around the Near East at the time of the early Israelites. They appear only as bit-players in the great drama of the Hebrews played out across the Old Testament Histories, popping up in the text only for the purposes of being slaughtered in great numbers by whichever king happened to be running the Israeli war-machine at the time. So who were the Ammonites, and what gave them the audacity to live in lands which Yahweh had promised to his chosen people?

The Bible identifies them as the descendants of Benammi, a relative of Abraham. How close a relative? Well, remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? Fleeing the scene of Yahweh’s burning-sulphur-based wrath, Abraham’s nephew Lot escapes (minus his now-composed-of-condiment wife) to the mountains, along with his two daughters. Said daughters, believing that the cataclysm they’ve just high-tailed it away from represents the end of humanity, see it as their duty to re-populate the world with their offspring. Only problem is, there’s a distinct lack of eligible bachelors around, on account of them all perishing in the aforementioned rain of sulphurous death. So they hatch a plot to sleep with the only available male around…

“And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the first born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.” Genesis 19:31-38

In a rather amusing bit of propaganda, the Hebrew scriptures make the point that their enemies are the offspring of an incestuous father-daughter relationship – you have to wonder how often that taunt came up on the battlefield.

Of course the Ammonites were’t really the spawn of Lot’s over-randy daughter. They were a small kingdom located to the east of the Dead Sea, in the north of modern-day Jordan. It seems likely that there were close genealogical relationships between them, the Israelites, the Moabites and the other small Semitic tribes knocking around Canaan at the time, and there was probably a good deal of intermarrying going on as well (which, as the Bible makes very clear, God was not pleased about). They were certainly much more closely related to the Hebrew tribes than the pesky Philsitines, Israel’s other major bugbear at the time (the Philistines, who occupied what is now the Gaza Strip, were most likely an offshoot of the Mycenaeans – making them, ironically, far more culturally refined than the Israelites of the time). The kingdom of Ammon was predominantly agricultural – their lands were highly fertile and the number of ruined settlements in the area attests to a settled and agrarian population.
The Ammonites had close diplomatic ties with their neighbours and kinsmen, the Moabites, and they banded together to defend against the aggressive Israelite expansionist policies, to the extent that they were often referred to as a single group (the “Children Of Lot”). They were excluded from “the congregation of the LORD” because they supposedly prevented the Israelites from crossing their lands during the conquest of Canaan – in spite of the fact that the kingdom of Ammon lay to the east of Canaan, and the Israelites (supposedly) invaded from the west. This charge smacks of Hebrew propaganda, but was clearly a popular belief among the ancient Israelites, who needed a good excuse to vilify their neighbours.

Among their other excuses was, naturally, the fact that the Ammonites followed a different religion, worshipping a pantheon which included Baal and Yahweh, but set them under the jurisdiction of the Ammonite deity Milcom. So disapproving were the Yahweh-worshippers that they actually co-opted Milcom (under the slightly different pronunciation Molech) as part of the demonic hierarchy – an idea expounded upon by Christianity, which made him a major figure in the Fall and a Prince of Hell. It’s worth noting that Milcom/Molech was also worshipped by the Moabites (as Chemosh), by the Edomites (as Quaush) and was sometimes seen as an aspect of Baal by the ancient Semites, so he was a pretty major figure in ancient Near-Eastern religion.

Unfortunately, most of what we know of the Ammonites is from the Old Testament itself (and other Israelite sources, plus a few mentions in the records of the Assyrians). Only a few fragments of their own texts survive – a short inscription, a bronze bottle and a few scraps of pottery are all we have. As a result, most of what we know about the Ammonites comes from their enemies, who naturally portray them in the worst light possible. With the aid of archaeology, some additional pieces of the puzzle appear, but we will probably never know the full story of the Israelites’ ancient foe.