Moabites

Moabites, a pastoral people, who inhabited the bleak and mountainous country east of the lower part of the Jordan and of the Dead Sea, divided into two portions by the deep bed of the Arnon. Their capitals were Ar-Moab and Kir-Moab, both south of the Arnon, but their kings often resided in their native places, as Mesha in Dibon. Their sovereign divinity was Chemosh, and patriotism was an essential part of their religion. They were ethnologically cognate with the Hebrews, and were compelled to become tributary to David, but about 850 B.C. shook off their allegiance to the Jewish kings, and afterwards took part with the Chaldeans against the Jews. Their name no longer exists, and the remnants of the people have long been included among the Arabs. The most striking feature about the country in modern times is the immense number of rude stone monuments with which it is covered. Major Conder found no fewer than a thousand of these of the usual varieties (dolmens, menhirs, circles, and alignments) familiar in the British Isles and Brittany, occurring in distinct centres, usually with a cairn at the top of the nearest hill. He rejects the sepulture theory, and believes the dolmens to have been altars. The menhirs were anciently objects of worship, anointed with oil, or smeared with blood, and such a series of alignments and scattered stones as those of El-Mareighât may be supposed to be offerings of pilgrims to this shrine. For the so-called Moabite pottery, which Shapira succeeded in selling to the German government for nearly £3000, see an account by M. Clermont-Ganneau, who detected the imposture, in Les Fraudes archéologiques en Palestine (1885); see also Conder's Heth and Moab: Explorations in 1881-82 (1883).