was discovered among the ruins of his capital, Dibon. The country north
of the Arnon was wrested from Israelitish hands, and the King of Israel,
in spite of help from Judah and Edom, failed to recover it. Moab was
permanently lost to the kingdom of Samaria. The Assyrian texts mention
some of its later rulers. One of them was Shalman, who may be the
spoiler of Beth-Arbel referred to by Hosea;[10] another was
Chemosh-nadab, the contemporary of Hezekiah.

Chemosh-nadab signifies "Chemosh is noble." Chemosh was the national god
of Moab, as Milcom or Ammi was of Ammon. Like Yahveh of Israel, he stood
alone, with no wife to share his divinity. So entirely, in fact, had the
conception of a goddess vanished from the mind of the Moabite, that, as
we learn from the Moabite Stone, the Babylonian Istar, the Ashtoreth of
Canaan, had been transformed into a male deity, and identified with
Chemosh. It was to Ashtar-Chemosh, Mesha tells us, and not to Ashtoreth,
that he devoted the captive women of Israel.

The older population, expelled or enslaved by the conquering Moabites,
went by the name of Emim. It is probable that they belonged to the same
stock as the Zamzummim or Zuzim whose country had been seized by the
Ammonites. We may gather from the narrative in Genesis that the invaders
forced their way eastward and northward from the valley of the Jordan
and the shores of the Dead Sea.

South of Moab were the rugged and barren mountains of Seir, the seat of
the kingdom of Edom. In prehistoric days they had been the home of the
Horites, whose name may denote that they were of the "white" Amorite
race or that they were dwellers in "caves." To the Egyptians it was
known as "the Red Land," along with the desert that stretched westward;
"Edom" is merely the Hebrew or Canaanitish translation of the Egyptian