Jordan's capital Amman takes its name from the ancient kingdom of Ammon
Amman, Jordan's capital, stands on the site of Rabbah, chief city of the Ammonites, a small kingdom east of the Jordan River that outlasted Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors. A Greek pharaoh renamed it Philadelphia, and Ammonites were still reported as a numerous people in the second century AD.
Ammon occupied the plateau between the Arnon and Jabbok valleys from late in the second millennium BC. Its name rests on an old West Semitic word for grandfather or forefather, so it meant something like of the ancestor. Genesis gives the Ammonites an unflattering origin as descendants of Ben-Ammi, son of Lot by his younger daughter; many scholars now read that tale as Israelite mockery of a rival neighbour rather than literal genealogy.
Survival took diplomacy. When Assyria was swallowing nearby states, Ammon paid tribute and kept its independence. An Assyrian inscription, the Kurkh Monolith, records an Ammonite king fighting beside Ahab of Israel against Shalmaneser III at Qarqar in 853 BC. By 734 BC its ruler Sanipu was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, and one surviving tribute list shows Ammon paying just a fifth of what Judah paid. A bronze bottle found in Amman names King Hissalel, who ruled around 620 BC, and his son Amminadab II.
For decades historians assumed Nebuchadnezzar II had flattened the region. Newer archaeology suggests otherwise: after being devastated in the 580s BC, Ammon became a Babylonian province and actually flourished, continuing into the Persian era. Around 255 BC Ptolemy II of Egypt seized Rabbah, rebuilt it and named it Philadelphia after his own nickname, though writers of the time mostly ignored the change. It later became a contested frontier between Ptolemaic and Seleucid rulers and then part of the Nabataean kingdom.
In the Bible, Ammonites are persistent adversaries of Israel. Their pressure on Israelite towns east of the Jordan is credited with uniting the tribes under Saul, who defeated King Nahash, and David later besieged Rabbah for a year. Yet the relationship was tangled: Naamah, mother of Solomon's heir Rehoboam, was an Ammonite. Distinct Ammonite identity faded through assimilation after Pompey brought Roman rule in 63 BC.
Source: Ammon
