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 Hauran, the name of which we first meet with on the monuments of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal.  To the north it was bounded by Ituraea, so named from Jetur, the son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 15), the road through Ituraea (the modern Jedur) leading to Damascus and its well-watered plain.

The gardens of Damascus lie 2260 feet above the sea.  In the summer the air is cooled by the mountain breezes; in the winter the snow sometimes lies upon the surface of the land.  Westward the view is closed by the white peaks of Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; eastward the eye wanders over a green plain covered with the mounds of old towns and villages, and intersected by the clear and rapid streams of the Abana and Pharphar.  But the Abana has now become the Barada, or “cold one,” while the Pharphar is the Nahr el-Awaj.